College Football Win Totals - ESPN Article

For those that are not an ESPN Insider, here is my portion of the College Football Win Totals article that Chad Millman interviewed me about Thursday evening.  I cannot post the entire article for copyright reasons, but my part looked like this:

That's why I also called The SportsBoss. You may remember him from my football columns last season as the numbers whiz who applies his algorithmic genius to sports betting. I know he spent about 2.5 hours researching each team, all 124 of them, over the summer, filling three binders with info. He has more opinions about Duke, New Mexico and other teams that have no business calling themselves FBS teams than James Dolan has excuses for not signing Jeremy Lin. I thought I'd share them, along with some others from Paul Stone

Kansas Jayhawks over 3.5
SportsBoss: "When I am doing these over-unders I am looking for games they are likely to win and then how many of the other games they need to win to get over that mark. When I look at Kansas I see they have with two winnable games, South Dakota State and Rice. So I [have] 10 other games and I have to win two of them. They are at Northern Illinois, which lost its quarterback, and they have Iowa State at home. I think they can beat Northern and beat Iowa State at home for sure. And I think they can beat Oklahoma State at home."

Duke Blue Devils over 3.5
SportsBoss: "Three of their first four games are at home against FIU, North Carolina Central and Memphis. I think the Blue Devils are definitely going to make a bowl this year. They will improve by three wins. They will beat North Carolina at home. They will beat Miami at home. They will win either at Wake or against Virginia. They will win that last game at home against Miami to get into the bowl. What I look at is how they lost last year. They lost one by two, one by four one by seven and one by one; 14 points combined in four games. All one score or less. Those could swing and it's a 7-5 team. It shows consistency and being in games, and with experience that is a step forward. Don't get me wrong they won't be like Bama. But they will be improved."

Arizona State Sun Devils under 5
SportsBoss: "Out of conference they have games at home against Illinois and at Mizzou. Plus they have nine conference games, including five on the road. With eight combined starters back and a new coach, this team will regress. I think it will be the worst team in the Pac 12 this year."

Just so my readers and clients are aware, I am not a big proponent of this kind of wagering as there are just far too many variables that can get involved, such as injuries being the biggest, that impact these season long wagers.  But, you can certainly assume that my feelings on the above teams go the way I projected their final record to look.

I will likely be back later today posting Part II of my NFL Turnovers Article, truly a must read for any NFL handicapper or player who uses stats in their analysis.