[ML4L]

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My issue is that power rankings, etc (such as sagarin) are very inaccurate at the tail ends (with both the top and bottom teams). Hence, their utility for measuring match-up involving the top 5 teams are way off.

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I agree with this 100%, which is part of why I don't think that any computer rating can do a really good job of handicapping. Computer rankings don't properly take into account "fluke" occurrences (such as the Oregon/Oklahoma replay issue), injuries, young teams getting better as the season wears on, etc.

I think that the issue of power rankings under-rating the very best teams is why you will often see those teams have very strong ATS records in addition to their zero or one-loss record SU. In most cases, it is well into the season before "everyone" becomes convinced that certain teams are head and shoulders above the other elite teams (Texas last year being a good example). As it stands now, I don't think that tOSU is being credited with being 4+ points better than everyone else in the country. One can only speculate why that might be, but I think that it's safe to say that, right or wrong, not everyone appears to share your opinion on tOSU. Which is good news for you, because it's letting you pound what you perceive as a huge +EV spot...

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Furthermore, power ratings are pretty crappy in the first few weeks of the football season. The best team Iowa has played is #48 according to sagarin. Iowa's ranking is a big unknown. Are 'value' betters likely to discount the rating when there is so much error behind the number? Do value betters look at the likely distribution of what the 'true' power ranking difference might be?

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Again, my (un)educated guess is that nobody is putting any stock in computer rankings for Iowa yet, due to the Tate injury, the weak SoS, and the fact that it is still early in the season. It looks like people have Iowa pegged around where they did at the start of the season, perhaps a little lower.

As one poster pointed out, this game was a pk when Pinny had a line up for it during the preseason. So, there has been some reaction to the early season performance of each team. But, getting back to your original question (which was probably rhetorical...oh well [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]), I think that the books are going to be heavily-influenced by preseason expectations in the absence of very obvious evidence to the contrary. Enough people are still on the Iowa bandwagon that, when combined with the fact that tOSU doesn't seem to command a USC-type premium yet, -7 should balance the books.

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