[rjp]

Let me also add that, from my perspective, the point spread is a secondary. I'm much more concerned with the team's probability of winning. Once you've got this the point spread can be approximated fairly easily.

The only problem is that when you're trying to gauge the successfulness of a probability you can't use simple W-L records, so you'll have to use some sort of loss function that can be difficult to interpret when the probabilities vary.