CFB Early Lines Thread (week of 10/8)

[MyTurn2Raise]

hahahahahaha...I gave up on it moving down to the 3

oh wellz...I suck at reading line movements

it seemed to be going the other way

[thelyingthief]

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.I believe my post had a ton of facts..

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it's not your facts i question, it's your interpretation:

e.g. missouri vs illinois.

up 35-13, the game was effectively over by the middle of the 3rd quarter. very, very few teams can overcome a four score deficit in one and one-half quarters. in fact, i can't remember more than 2 with any degree of clarity, can you? the game WAS OVER. when the illini attempted to mount a comeback, as you state, in the third quarter/early fourth, missouri roused itself, and did not permit the illini to score thereafter. consider, for 14 minutes, the illini could not score. the missouri team did pad its lead. college teams often, pro teams occasionally, quit playing after building a big lead. it's a fact. you may persist believing otherwise, but football is a game of momentum, and young players constantly fall prey to relinquishing it, since their game is overly dependent upon emotion and raw talent, and less on matured skills. worse teams often beat better; horrible teams beat great teams.

as to, again, the big ten issue: the speed differential was blatantly obvious in the wisconsin game (wisconsin: -10 yds rushing, 206 yds passing, 196 net--scores don't always tell the tale; wis. had a good defense, and the arkansas passing game had collapsed in the latter part of the season, i believe monk was side-lined even then, so the task facing wis.'s defense was greatly alleviated by facing a monotone offensive strategy), and Tennessee, well, i thought the 9-4 lions better going in than the 9-4 vols, but neither very good in fact. you're fond of dismissing fumble recoveries and returns, so you'll no doubt ask about the lions' 4th quarter 88 yd fumble recovery and return for a TD as a 14 pt swing, so..

moreover, i think tennessee under fulmer to lack sufficient team speed, and the primary cause for their perennially disappointing results in the SEC. last year the vols enjoyed a relaxed schedule in the SEC, losing to ark, lsu, and fla., and beating vanderbilt(0 wins sec), kentucky(2 wins sec), s. caro.(3 wins sec), and alabama(2 wins sec).

by the way, tenn. might be a good play against this week on the road at mississippi. i haven't looked at the match-up, but my doubts are aroused.

in any event, facts are many, and it is not so much their number or their accuracy that tell in a discussion of this nature, but their pertinence. perhaps we can lay this to rest with an agreement to disagree. i know i speak for 9/10ths of the country when i say that we do NOT wish to see an SEC/big 10 match up in Tempe this year.

tlt.

post script: there has been ONE undisputed national champion from the big 10 in the last 20 years (OSU, and the referees cheated), although michigan shared the title with nebraska. the pac 10: 3 (shares), the big 12-5(shares); the sec 7 (with shares), acc/miami-4(shares), and 1 indepedent. (the florida-sec complex 11 total in the past twenty years!)

i know this will not impact your love of the big ten, but it should certainly underscore its status with respect to the other conferences to those less biased. i mean, forthright in their opinions.

[MyTurn2Raise]

huh...... I make fun of the big11ten all the time

and using national titles to compare conferences is a joke--the best conference is actually at a disadvantage (tougher to go undefeated)
did you counter the 8-6 thing?
Also, Ted Ginn looked pretty damn quick last year. Perhaps, it wouldn've helped had he not got injured after one play of domination.

i'm not biased at all....I've made fun of the big11ten more than any other conference....I'm just not an idiot

I've destroyed your points...

***you think Penn St is slow... (King, Williams, Butler, Norwood--are you for real?) Both Penn St corners were in the top 4 in their high school classes at their position. I'm sure they aren't fast. Derrick Williams, starting WR, was the #1 DB coming out of HS. Check out the 40 times on the DBs, ATHs, RBs they've recruited 2004 class Change the year to 2005, 2006, 2007. It's much the same. What is more is that unlike many SEC schools, nearly every player on that list made it to school.

***you think Big11Ten is not a home for modern offenses... (Purdue, Illinois, Indiana, N'Western, Minnesota, Michigan St--even Ohio St used pretty modern attacks with Troy Smith) Even Wisconsin somehow beat an Arkansas SEC team without the ability to grind it out on the ground.

***you think Wisconsin's offense dominated Illinois... (haha...run oriented offense was turned to pass only and lost the turnover battle as a result)

***you think Mizzou scored at will...(1 in 3.5 series is not at will (Navy/Pitt tonight was at will--both teams scored 6 of 8 drives in regulation)) For comparison, Illinois scored on 5 of 10 drives v Wisconsin. Mizzou scored 4 of 14 v Illinois. Illinois scored 4 of 15 v Mizzou.

***you think Wisconsin handled Illinois' run after the first quarter...(did you miss the 9 play, all rush, 71 yd TD drive when Wisconsin got it to a score in the 4th, or the 9 play, 8 rush, 79 yard drive for a TD in the 3rd---I guess 25 carries for 181 yards in the second half for 7.24 ypc is shutting down the rush...LMAO)

wow.... 0 for 5

lol @ momentum BTW

have you been sufficiently pwned, or do I need to continue this?

[bills217]

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Notre Dame +13.5

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*pukes*

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[thelyingthief]

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***you think Wisconsin handled Illinois' run after the first quarter...(did you miss the 9 play, all rush, 71 yd TD drive when Wisconsin got it to a score in the 4th, or the 9 play, 8 rush, 79 yard drive for a TD in the 3rd---I guess 25 carries for 181 yards in the second half for 7.24 ypc is shutting down the rush...LMAO)

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dude, i said, handled, not "shut down"--the badgers stopped illinois' rushing attack (which is their principle weapon, nicht wahr?) well enough to give themselves the chance to win the game. the badgers scored 26 pts to 14 after falling behind 17. this is "slowing" the attack sufficiently to gain MORE opportunities than their opponent.

so, instead of addressing what i said, to wit:

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true, they play defense fairly well, but is that enough? wisconsin, but for turning the ball over twice in succession on the pass, dominated an illinois defense incapable of handling an air game

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you get anal and throw "facts" at me that are impertinent to the issue raised. you may not agree that yielding 400 yds in the air, and being out-scored 26-14 (AGAIN, AFTER THE INITIAL BURST, which you correctly determined did not last 15 minutes, but 21, or 22 minutes. wow, dude, brilliant [censored] that), indicates a strong weakness in that defensive secondary, but I DO. how this makes you the champion forensic fool of sports blog whatever, i don't quite comprehend, but apparently it does. good for you.

again, i misstated the following

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also, wisconsin handled the illini's rushing attack fairly well, if one overlooks the first quarter, where the bulk of the rushing yards were forfeited

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little realizing a bean counter was lurking in the shadows looking at semi colons, not the intent and implication of the argument, which, as i've stated above, remains a viable interpretation. sufficiently viable to warrant a bet against a SLOW penn st. team.

and they ARE slow. painfully, patently slow, go review their loss to michigan, a faster team. then review the ease with which oregon shredded michigan's secondary. the variance is obvious.

if you'd like to send your bets my way, i'd happily book em. i love bean counters. god, i'd go broke without bean counters.

[MyTurn2Raise]

if you noticed, the rushing stats I posted (25 carries for 181 yards) were SECOND HALF only. I took even the smaller case. Illinois ypc improved as the game went on. More opportunities came from having one more possession.


when was this chance to win for the Badgers? They were never threatening within a score. The closest the Badgers ever came when they were within a TD was when the officials incorrectly awarded Beckum a 35 yd catch that the announcers vociferously objected against as it was clear it was an incompletion. They still didn't get inside the Illini 40 and the lead was never in doubt.


it's not bean counting.... you have fundamental flaws in how you are seeing the games.... HUGE basic flaws, like folding AA preflop....
Did you even watch the games?
Do you watch games?

Other than burning Illinois on one fake reverse and bomb, Illinois' defense controlled what Wisconsin did. They forced Wisconsin to try and beat them throwing short passes over the middle all game. It's what every big11ten team does against Purdue. Same philosophy here. Good luck marching over and over and over without screwing up. It's a scheme, and it worked very well.


If you think Penn St is slow, your eyes are being fooled by the optical illusion of their old school uniforms. Their coaches and attacks have been awful, but that team is NOT slow. They got as much speed at the skill positions and on the lines as anyone else in the country. Did you look at the player breakdowns? All those guys running 4.45 40m or less on the outside are not fast? All those linemen running sub 5.0 40m are not fast?

Yes, Wisconsin and Penn St play schemes that are more traditional. However, to call Penn St slow is an exercise in lunacy. You did see Penn St shut down the Tennessee offense last year, right? The same offense that was 3rd in the SEC in scoring (just 9 points behind Arkansas for first) at 26.5 ppg in conference even though they played the 1, 2, and 4 defenses in the SEC West. The same wideouts that absolutley torched Cal.
Just because PSU's coaches scheme poorly doesn't mean they are slow.

PSU and Wisconsin are better than they were last year. The bad luck for them is the Big11Ten has a middle to it again this year after an absolutely pathetic display by the bottom 7 teams last year. However, Michigan has somewhat balanced the conference improvement by dropping a little.
Oh yeah, Michigan didn't get beat because they were slow either. They got beat because they got outcoached. They don't know how to handle spread schemes. They had countless blown assignments in 4 straight games. They aren't slow. They get among the most talented and gifted athletes in the country every year. You can look it up...the slowest guy they played for a considerable number of plays in those games was 4.49 40m. All the other secondary players run 4.4 or better. Their RBs and WRs are all 4.4 guys. Go through and check their linebackers and linemen...just as fast as the rest of the country's elite.
Someone just posted a study a few weeks ago in sporting events forum about the myth of Southern speed. You should check it out sometime. It's not that these teams are slow. It's poor schemes.

[MyTurn2Raise]

BTW--I'm definitely not as high on the Big11Ten as ESPN voters

[bills217]

I was kinda poking fun at iggy about Notre Dame earlier, but after looking into things a little closer, in all seriousness...are there 10 I-A teams worse than Notre Dame right now? Are there 5?

Looking back, I am sick that I didn't have a max play on Michigan against them. Less than 300 total yards in the first 2 games combined. That is just abysmal. 2nd best offensive performance through 6 games yielded 203 total yards, against Michigan State's swiss cheese-like D which just gave about that many points to Northwestern. Their only life this season was after Purdue had taken the foot off their throat leading 23-0.

The UCLA game I put basically nothing into. Notre Dame had 140 yards of offense. That's horrible. After UCLA's 2nd-string QB went down, they had a 3rd-string walk-on QB in the game, and to say he was a disaster would be an understatement. He was so bad that after the game, media members were asking (in all seriousness) why Dorrell didn't move to put a WR in at QB who was a HS QB. He is probably the worst QB that will see the field in I-A this season. And they still doubled ND in yardage.

How can a semi-competent football team go +7 in turnovers in ONE GAME and ONLY win by 14?

(Warning: daisy-chain argument.)

To put this week's game into perspective, GT outgained ND by 260 yards at ND. BC outgained GT by 260 at GT. [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

My only concern is how much BC will try to do. They kinda laid an egg against I-AA UMass, only winning by 10 at home, but they have pretty well dispatched their other opponents. But then UMass managed 277 yards, so do we have any reason to think Notre Dame is better than them? Looking at their performances against Michigan, it is pretty clear that Appalachian State is...I dunno...14 better than Notre Dame on a neutral? More?

Given last week's results, the public (especially the usual ND backers) is likely to be hopping on a Notre Dame resurgence here, when in fact, their performance last week mirrored their other (horrendous) performances this season in every way but the score.

I've been working to convince myself not to go above 5 units on this one (given that 13.5 is still available at VIP, slow line - won't add at 14).

I am not a Notre Dame hater. I own some Notre Dame merchandise. They're just that bad.

[bills217]

Louisville +10.5

couldn't resist

[Austiger]

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Louisville +10.5

couldn't resist

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*pukes*