Episode 30

Shane Mercer [00:00:11]:

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Behind the Lines. I'm your host, Shane Mercer. We've got Andrew Pace, the founder of inplayLIVE over there as usual. And this time around, we've brought back John Wilson, known in the inplayLIVE community as GosuThune. Welcome back, John. Great to have you back. If you guys tuned in several months ago at the beginning of baseball season, you would have heard a little bit from John back then, a super, super sharp sports value analyst, really good in baseball. But now today we brought him back to talk all things football, specifically college football. Yes, I know NFL begins this week and we will be talking a lot about the NFL come next week, so please tune in for that. And we'll probably bring John back for that. If he can make it, we'd love to have him back, but today it's all about college football. Now, before we dive into it, I want to remind everybody to like download, subscribe, follow us on all the socials at inplayLIVE. And if you've got a betting story you want to share with us, please put it in the comments below. Reach out to us. We'd be happy to share your story on the show, maybe even bring you on. Now let's dive into this episode of Behind the Lines, the only sports podcast out there purifying the sports betting industry. All right, all things college football. But Pace, before we get to that, a very quick update from a guest we had on several months ago. He was actually one of these people who shared a sports betting story with us and we brought him on to share his story. You got an update from Chris?

Andrew Pace [00:01:40]:

Yeah, so Chris was on, and if you guys remember, he shared a story with us where he was wagering one dollars bets on inplayLIVE. And after 22 one dollars bets, Bet365, shut his account down and restricted him, which is the definition of responsible gaming, and certainly not a player that was impacting in any way, shape or form. The Bet365, profitability or landscape. Just a guy who was trying to learn how to sports, bet that got restricted before he even could get started. But more significantly than that, he was battling cancer at the time. So obviously Bet365 doesn't know that. But it just goes to show you that you never know who your users are on your platform and there's a lot of good people out there and a lot of people that want to just bet on sports for a whole series of different reasons. And one of those is just to learn how to do it, because you go see some buddies at the Super Bowl and they're talking about spreads and money lines and different things going. You know, it's a social thing in a lot of ways. So you want to be a part of that circle. And yeah, Chris was just learning how to bet on sports and was restricted. But the good news was he actually had to leave inplayLIVE because of his health. And he has returned and has passed on a message to me that his health has improved significantly and he's really excited for this football.

Shane Mercer [00:03:12]:

Oh, that is such great news. I'm so excited to hear that one, that he is feeling better, that his health has improved, but also that he decided he wanted to come back to the community as well. I can't help but imagine that being part of a community like this would have helped them along the way in that process of getting better, getting stronger and having support. So really happy to hear that about Chris. Chris, we're really glad to have you back if you're listening. Okay with that, let's dive in to college football. So you guys got to break this down for me because I know very little about college football compared to NFL football. We just passed week zero and week one. We have week zero and week one behind us, both of them behind us. John, very quickly, what did we learn over this short amount of time?

GosuThune [00:03:57]:

So guess, you know, there's a few things probably that we learned. I think I was looking at the numbers, I think most of us were looking at the clock changes and some of the new rules around that going into the season. And I've been looking at the data on that and I believe that the overs were actually winning. So it seems maybe that there's been a little bit of an overcorrection though. The first half unders were actually profitable, so the stats were flipped. It was about 60% first half unders were winning, but 60% of full game overs are winning and maybe that's just some variance with just a 50 game or so sample size. I think we've all seen a lot of end of game garbage touchdowns in some of these games that have been important. The Hawaii game comes to mind where there was just a garbage drive at the end of a game and then like a personal foul to allow a two point conversion to go through and just a bunch of weird stuff. So maybe just a little bit of some small sample size there, but it does seem like maybe there's a bit of an overcorrection. I personally don't remember seeing this many games with totals in the 40s pregame in a week in college football, especially in some of the more marquee matchups. So it is the first two weeks or so of the season. You get a lot of those kind of worthless games like those FCS games, they're just kind of free wins for the big boys on their schedule and you just don't really learn a lot from know, we've seen some upsets. I think everybody remembers Colorado was obviously a huge one really important for the books. So there's a lot of preseason conceptions about teams that we've got to try to figure out and see how much of that is true and how much of that is just a figment of our imagination.

Shane Mercer [00:05:42]:

Okay, so a couple of things that we got to sort of pick apart in there. Pace, can you explain the rule change that John alluded to and that I sort of mentioned off the top a little bit there. What exactly is this new rule change? How does it work?

Andrew Pace [00:05:56]:

Should I do the skit from our instagram? Because I got it.

Shane Mercer [00:05:58]:

Which is a great skit.

Andrew Pace [00:06:02]:

There are three rule changes in college football that you're going to want to know about if you're betting on Saturdays. Number one, you can no longer use consecutive time out. So if you're going to ice, you better think twice. Number two, you can no longer end a quarter on an untimed down. So if there's a flag at the end of the quarter, you just move on to the next quarter. That's for the first and third quarters, obviously. And then the last one is the most significant one that's that the running clock is now in play. So traditionally, speaking in college football, if you got a first down, the clock would stop. So now the clock continues to run unless it's the final two minutes of the first half or the end of the game. We've seen a lot of rule changes in sports. Obviously, baseball was huge this year, like the changes that they put in. I would argue that this is the single biggest rule change I've ever seen in sports. And I think John's data that he just touched on speaks to how big of a rule change it is because we've got all these college football pregame totals in the know. I've seen some Iowa games previously to this where the total is in the 30s. But mostly speaking, a low scoring or a low total in college football is around the 50 point mark pregame. And all these games are in the that's because of this rule change. But the flip side to that is it's still college football. They still have splash plays way beyond what we see in the NFL where you'll see three scores in a matter of a minute and we saw that this weekend. So when that happens, wide open players pick sixes. Whatever the case may be, it's pretty hard to fall underneath a 40 point threshold.

Shane Mercer [00:07:58]:

Wow. Okay, so first of all, I think you recreated that skit almost perfectly. From what I remember, it was like bang on exactly the same script altogether. You nailed it. Nicely done. Okay, so, John, what you were saying there then is that the books have overcorrected, and now they've dropped all of these totals, these pregame totals down because they're expecting the game to move along at a quicker pace and that they expect we're going to get less scoring. But from what we've witnessed so far, that hasn't been the case.

GosuThune [00:08:32]:

Yeah, I know after week zero there were some other sources I checked about the average plays per game of teams from last year that played in week zero and comparing that to their week zero game, I haven't seen the stats on that from week one. I haven't done my research yet, but I know that those were actually pretty close. So I don't think the total number of plays for some teams is down that significantly. And it might not be. I think it's going to impact certain teams more than others. Right? If there are teams that are big play teams so teams who score a good amount of their points off of 30 to 40 yard plays or more, it's not going to actually impact them as much as it's going to impact methodically matriculate the ball down the field type teams. Right. The clock is not stopping after first downs. That's the only real change here. So if you're not getting a lot of first downs and especially in games where there's teams that are already low scoring to begin with who just don't get first downs because their offenses are bad, the rule is hardly impacting it at all. I think what we are seeing is a lot more commercials because the games are still slotted for three and a half hours even though they're taking there's less in game time. So that's been pretty frustrating. I know it's been frustrating for I think coaches and players as well but one thing that I think is actually really important about the rules and the difference between now college and pro that people aren't talking about is what is still it. So at the end of the half and at the end of the game in the NFL the clock stops when you go out of bounds with under five minutes in the half in the game. In college it doesn't stop until two minutes and that's been balanced out by the fact that the clock's been stopping after first down. So now you have effectively an extra three minutes of continuous play on the clock in college compared to the NFL and also there's no two minute warnings in college. So something to look to in the first half or the end of the game. There's a little bit more fluidity with how those now play out compared to the way they used to. And so that's kind of something to keep in mind when you're looking at how the books might adjust lines in the live betting sense, where typically you expect a lot of volatility at the end of a half or in the end of a game. And in college, that might actually decrease this year.

Shane Mercer [00:10:57]:

Really interesting there. So we may see that go down but Pace, you mentioned something that we see in the CFL that we don't see as much of in the NFL and that is big splash plays. Why is that? What is it about the CFL? What is it about college football that lends itself to these bigger splash plays?

Andrew Pace [00:11:18]:

It's a special time of the year, Shane, when you have the CFL, the NFL.

Shane Mercer [00:11:21]:

All the football is just blending together up here.

Andrew Pace [00:11:27]:

Yeah, it's the caliber of player that's on the field. In the NFL you've got the top 1% of players in the world and in college football you've probably got the top 1% football players in the world. So that might not seem significant, but it's as significant as you could possibly fathom. So you're going to have superstar players like the two way player we saw for Colorado this past weekend, hunter, you're going to see two way players like him that are just absolute game breakers that in the NFL. Could that player be an all star pro bowler? Whatever you want to say, first round draft pick, by all means, absolutely. But in the NFL he may not quite stand out as much as he's doing at the collegiate level. So he had 119 or 111 snaps in that game. Right. And we saw some crazy catches on both sides of the ball from him. So you're going to get a guy out there that is significantly better than the defender that's up against him, and then you're also going to have a lower football IQ associated with the players that are out there, which will lead to broken defensive schemes and some more mistakes like, I think. Come on, man. On the Monday night NFL segment is usually comprised of college football highlights of some crazy stuff. So a really funny one that I saw in week zero was I think it was BYU. They turned around and did a pitch play where two running backs both thought it was for them, and he threw it the quarterback pitched it back to both of them at the same time and they just blew each other up, leading to a fumble. So we might be seeing that on Monday Night Football this week for the come on man. Yeah, I think it really is a combination of there is a greater talent differential, like the worst player in the NFL versus the best player in the NFL at the same position. Depending on what that position is, there might be anywhere from a 20 to maybe 100 or 500% spread in the caliber of that player. Whereas in college football the difference from that worst player at the position to the best is going to be just astronomical. So that leads to some bigger plays and then again of course that football IQ and the defensive schemes and patterns that are out there. Then last reason would be college football. We've got potentially I think the highest I've seen is 58. John 58, pregame favorite. What's the highest you've seen?

GosuThune [00:14:11]:

Yeah, it's definitely like in the upper fifty s I don't know that I've seen a 60. I'm sure there has been one. I think I know Oklahoma State last year because I know I bet the other team and lost. I think I took like plus 55 and a half or something like that. It definitely gets up there.

Andrew Pace [00:14:31]:

So you get these one play touchdowns where you got a 55 point pregame favorite. It's almost expected that that's going to happen.

Shane Mercer [00:14:40]:

Wow, 55 point game favorites and then a lot more. Come on man moments out there. John, how do you kind of take all of that and put it together at the beginning of a college football season and go out there and sort know, do battle with the sports books and kind of go after them so early on in the season, I guess. What advice do you have out there for recreational sports bettors and even those who are taking it a bit more seriously?

GosuThune [00:15:12]:

Yeah, I think you have to really lean into some of the things that Pace was talking about about college. Just to add on to that as well. I think it's also a limited amount of reps that the players can have. Not only are they also full time students, and we could joke about how the varying degrees to which they have to actually do their academic stuff depending on where they're going to school or who helps them with all of that, but they have that. And then there are very strict limitations on the amount of actual time they're allowed to practice in an organized way. Right. The rosters are also much larger so there's less individual work that people do and then they play less games and the seasons are shorter so there's just less repetition overall, so there's just going to be less consistency. So other things to consider in college too is it's very difficult to handicap games like when they handicap game -55, and a half? There's no way that that's very precise in any manner. Right. And even games against with bigger schools. Once you get outside of a touchdown spread in the game of football, things start to get weird. Because if the assumption is that two teams are not within one score of each other, then they're no longer playing a game for the majority of the time that we would consider like a standard game script. Right. So when you're not in a standard game script so, when you're not within a standard game script would be considered within one score of each other, that's when we as a football analytics community would say that you're most likely to run the plays and the game plan that you set out to at the beginning of the game. Once you fall behind by 10, 14, 17 points, you kind of abandon what you're doing, what you wanted to do originally, especially as the game gets later on. So the games will often devolve immediately into one team going forward on fourth downs early on, maybe their own side of the field. A lot of more throwing the ball from behind, teams, playing soft defense when they're up, you'll get a lot of backups in the games. So it's just important to remember that's a big part of college football. Another thing is really, again, remembering that these are relatively inexperienced players. They're also very young. They have other things in their life that are very important to them, and they have other distractions, like the school, the social life of being a college student, all that stuff. They're going to be very emotional when they win or when they lose games. And so when you think about how to bet spots on schedules if a team comes off a huge upset win, so maybe like Duke did over Clemson on Monday night, look at who are they playing next week, how important is that game? And then who are they playing the week after? You know, maybe you get what we call like a sandwich spot, where you're playing a big rival one week, then the next game is against a small FCS school or just a non conference game. That's not really important. And then the week after that is another rival. That's a sandwich spot where you look to say, hey, how much of a let down or how much non prep work are they doing in that spot? Are they laying a lot of points? What's the angle there? And so you can often find these teams laying three touchdowns to a small school in between playing two rivals. And all they're probably really interested in doing is just not getting anybody hurt and winning that game, because that game simply just isn't important to the grand scheme of everything. So there's a lot of things in college football that are different than the NFL per se, in that standpoint. Whereas in the NFL, you're just trying to win every game and you're playing every opponent to the best of your ability. In college, that's not always true, and it even varies from coach to coach. You can look up I would just Google people's names, coaches names, and you'll find certain coaches have really bad non conference records because they just don't value those games. So those are things to always consider when you're looking at college football games.

Shane Mercer [00:19:09]:

Wow, when I hear you talk about less games but player motivations, maybe not necessarily being in line for certain games, or maybe being more motivated for one game as opposed to another game, coaches and their decisions and their sort of plans going in and possibly changing midway through. And I know you said less games for each individual team, but man, when that window opens up on a Saturday, there's a lot of games going on. It is extremely high volume. Pace. All of this, to me, sounds like there's just so much chaos that can take place in college football compared to something like an NFL Sunday. Again, I've mentioned this on this podcast before. For those of you who don't know, Pace is live all day Saturday, all day Sunday. John's joining him for a good portion of it. These are twelve plus hour streams. And on a Saturday when there's college football on, I don't know what is there guys, 100 games, more than 100 games taking place if you include the extra games. So how are we taking all of that and boiling it down to the best opportunities? Pace, how are you mitigating the chaos?

Andrew Pace [00:20:28]:

Yeah, it's really tricky. I think that having the community is beneficial because it always seems like someone, somewhere in our group is watching one of the games. So if you have all these like minded people working towards the same goal, you find that your eyeballs almost become bigger because you're getting this assistance of the community in seeing what is transpiring on the field. So a good example of that from Week One. If you're listening to this in a non timely fashion today, I'll just give some background. Baylor is a Power Five school. Traditionally a school that wouldn't be considered a threat for the playoff, but definitely a school that has an expectation to be in the rankings and compete. And certainly a school that has blown the doors off of a number of teams over the last decade. And more specifically, a Heisman winning quarterback in the name of RG Three. Robert Griffin, who was beyond electric and I believe had a couple of 80 point offensive performances that season with Baylor after RG Three. Yeah, some really competitive games and what you'll see in Week Zero, Week One, and as John alluded to, even beyond, you can see some of these Power Five schools playing against some pretty bad teams in college football. You also have what are called paid games, where the program that is playing against the Power Five school is getting paid to play against them, but it's actually a part of their schedule. And you might have an FCS or even a Division Two school play, a Division One school. And these games are to build confidence for the Power Five school to give them almost like a real game practice where they're anticipated to beat the team, but where they can work on their plays and schemes and that kind of thing. In return, the school that they're playing against gets some pretty impactful money towards their program. And Texas State against Baylor last week was not a paid game, but it certainly was one that Baylor was expected to absolutely just destroy their opponent in and in all facets of the game. From the first quarter to the fourth quarter, texas State dominated Baylor. And the reason why I bring this example up is because this isn't a televised game. They're playing such a bad school that the broadcasts really don't focus on having this game available to the public. And even if you have college football packages and things like that. ODS are you probably won't find it on any channel, so you might need to dig deep into some live stream. And it's always funny when we get these games on. Like you throw on a stream and they'll literally be playing and the stadium might be empty. So we make jokes about how there's more people on the live stream than actually watching the game. But again, the reason why I bring it up is because Texas State dominated Baylor for the entirety of the game each quarter, they outscored them and outplayed them more or less. So that was a game where I don't have access to it and someone in the community brings it up and then we're able to profit off of it throughout the course of the game. So there is no simple answer to your question. I mean, we did an episode on setups, Shane, so I think that people of this podcast have seen what it is that I'm looking at on the screen. But on that same note, I'm going to touch on my setup right now because I kind of had a bit of a breakthrough this week where I'm now controlling my TV wall from my computer. And my setup on Saturday was electric. Nothing short of electric. I've never been in such a confident and calm space where I had access to the games. So YouTube TV does have latency. We know that. I do feel as though they've improved a little bit. I'm kind of seeing about 20 seconds, maybe 30 seconds of latency. So for the most part, you're not a full play behind you're on time where you're seeing the play before the next one is actually made. And I had five really good coaxial feeds on my screen, and then I brought up three really good feeds using online streams for a total of eight games. And then for a latent stream, I put the picture in picture on YouTube TV, where I had four out of market games on on top of that. So I had a grand total of twelve games on at once on Saturday. I'm not following all twelve of them, but if someone in the community needs to know a question or whatever about it, odds are one of those twelve games are the ones that we're actually betting on. So to have eyes on the game is really the key when it comes to all this chaos, because that gives you the best information. And as we've seen quite a bit with college basketball and quite a bit with college football, relying on the sports books as your source of information, I believe to be incredibly reliable, probably 95 plus percent of the time. But when you're betting with the volume that we have, we can't afford incorrect information 5% of the time. So when you have eyes on the game, you're getting that correct information. And I think that that is arguably the single most important thing, because every wager that we make, we're not taking it on a whim or a prayer. We're taking it based on the information that we're seeing on the field, the rink, or the court. So it's key.

Shane Mercer [00:26:26]:

I love that you brought that up, because I find my personal experience so I'm somebody who uses bet three six five to track games. I can't bet on bet three six five, that's another story. But I like to use my bet three six five and have it open to track games pretty regularly. And I find that when it comes to college football, specifically, bet three six five just sucks. And I can't rely on it more than 5% of the time. I'm finding it 20% of the time. It's giving me bad information, maybe even more than that, right? And maybe it is intentional and I don't know, but I just can't trust it. And so that's where I am heavily relying on you, Pace, and the community to kind of keep things updated, like where are they, what's actually happening? Because I only can watch a few at a time. That's sort of one area where I think maybe the books are creating an even greater edge for themselves by maybe purposefully or not purposefully giving bad information. John, how else do you find the sports books? Try to trick, trap, manipulate sports bettors when it comes to college football?

GosuThune [00:27:39]:

Oh, that's a good question. Well, I think they use a lot of the same tactics that they use in other sports. Maybe not other sports, but in other football leagues, like in general. So the NFL, if you took every favorite minus two and a half, you'd you would be you'd be losing a lot every year. You know, getting those getting that good side of that hook on that favorite is almost always a trap. Getting the good side of the hook on like an over on a total, like, on a key number, like a 50. So 55 is the most common number in college football. If you're getting a 54 and a half, a good chance if you're taking an over in that game, that's maybe a little bit of a trap. Always check the money distribution and the bets before the game. The Clemson game is 80% of people were betting on Clemson, but the line moved towards Duke. That's always a pretty good sign that you're -13 and a half or you think you're getting the good side of a number maybe is not a good bet. So they do that pregame live. I think it's kind of the same thing, but they'll tend to have over ten and a half points in a quarter, or over 13 or 14 and a half points in a quarter, and they're trying to get somebody to try to with some really high juice or like a positive number. So like plus 140 or 2.4 or something, they're. Trying to get people to bet on having two more scores or something like that. Those are a lot of the tricks that I see as far as the trackers go. I think a lot of times on our streams I've hear people say or ask like, so and so, are they in the red zone? And it's like, no, actually, the other team kicked a field goal. And the book just is now showing you that that team now has the ball in the red zone, but they don't. They haven't even kicked off yet, but it's already giving them possession. But where the ball is being kicked off from instead of, like, after the kick, right? So I think that they do a lot of that intentionally. It's similar to the way three six five, I think intentionally incorrectly counts offensive fouls in college basketball versus NBA, where in the NBA they don't count towards the team total, but they say that they do and in college they do count towards the team total, but they say that they don't on three six five. So I think they do a lot of that stuff intentionally across all sports and college football is no different. I will add to tie in your last point to the Texas State Baylor game, baylor actually hosts Utah this week. So I would imagine if going back to what I was talking about with schedules, it's very likely Baylor has spent the vast majority of their practices the last few weeks focusing on a game plan for Utah and not the team that they were 28 point favorites over, because that would be a big win for them against a ranked opponent. So it all comes full circle.

Shane Mercer [00:30:37]:

John, you seem like the kind of guy who does his homework regularly when it comes to CFL. There, I did it again.

GosuThune [00:30:48]:

Sorry to get it out of your brain.

Shane Mercer [00:30:50]:

I got to put it behind me.

Andrew Pace [00:30:51]:

Trying to promote the CFL to all the people wanting to bet on football.

Shane Mercer [00:30:55]:

Hey, you know what, we make money off the CFL. We find ways when it comes to college football. Pregame, John, is it worth doing that much amount of homework that's associated with it? If you're betting pregame, is there any value in pregame and trying know, figure out all of these lines, all of these numbers.

GosuThune [00:31:19]:

It is hard just because there's so many know in the NFL you can kind of look at like, oh, a slate, like on any given week, once you get in the season where there's by weeks it's like, oh, there's only twelve or 13 games every week and you can kind of already cross off some. Like I'm really not interested in those games where there's like a tanking team or there's two backup quarterbacks playing or something. You kind of just throw those out and it's like, let me focus on the games where I know what's actually going to be happening, where there's no question marks. College, it is very high volume and it's tough to know how to really handicap those games. Personally, again, I focus mostly on the schedule. So what I'll try to do is find locate teams who have scheduling spots where like I mentioned earlier, where they might have a let down game. I really want to focus on a team coming off a big upset win, a team playing an FCS school next week so they know they can throw the kitchen sink at whoever they're playing this week, or the opposite. Like I said earlier, if they're laying a lot of points and they've got a big game coming up, probably going to have a very vanilla game plan. I look at things like that. I don't really bother trying to handicap every single game. I do think there's a ton of value on college football, mostly because people want to bet a lot of the games, because there are so many games and there's so many games on TV that a lot of people just don't find good information. So it's really important to just try to figure out if starting quarterbacks are playing and stuff like that and things like that. But I do think you probably have a much higher edge on college football pregame than you do on NFL simply because there's much less scrutiny from the books on every single game. So you're going to find a lot of games where there's just a lot of opportunity. And so betting trends in college football I think is very important for that reason. Whereas in other sports I'm not really a big trends bettor. I actually just tend to want to handicap the matchups and the games. But college football, I do like to bet those trends, those scheduling spots a lot.

Shane Mercer [00:33:26]:

Pace, you bet live. So does John, of course, but you famously will mostly only bet live, not pregame. How do you prepare for a massive Saturday slate? What kind of homework do you do?

Andrew Pace [00:33:39]:

Nothing.

Shane Mercer [00:33:41]:

There you have it. No study, no prep.

Andrew Pace [00:33:45]:

So all my homework and all my work is just getting my sports books ready. I don't want to bet the game until I've seen a decent amount of information in that game and to give kind of a little master class or crash course on it in the first quarter. ODS. Are you're going to see at least two drives, one from each team? There are exceptions to that with some crazy shit in college onside kicks or a turnover where you end up only seeing one team twice. And in order for it to just be one team twice, it'd probably have to be army or Navy or someone that's just running the clock and running the ball the whole time. But I want to see those first two drives. And there was countless examples in week zero and week one where we actually saw touchdowns traded on the first two drives and then no scores for a very long time after was I think it was West Virginia that was playing this week. And it really doesn't matter, giving the specific example, but I believe they scored a touchdown on their first or second drive and they played Penn State, and I don't think they scored again in the entire game. So you can really see something early that could indicate that that particular team would be successful. USC had one of these paid games last week and it was 77 midway through the first quarter. In that game, I think they won 81 to seven or something like that. So those first drives can be a little bit of a mirage, but I want to see a couple of drives and see how those teams are playing with any level of consistency. Sometimes you might get a kickback TD or an 80 yard touchdown or something like that. The utah game this past week, we saw the first play of the game, a 75 yard touchdown pass. That to me is bad data unless they do it again and again and again and again. But that to me is bad data. I want to see consistency from teams where they're able to convert on third down, where they're not able to convert on third down, that kind of thing. And then based on that information that I'm actually seeing starting to deploy my bankroll. So much so, in fact, that I believe the bias of the pregame lines alone can impact you negatively. So to give you an example of that, let's go back to baylor against Texas state where you go, oh, no, baylor is going to win their 28 point favorites. Whereas I like to look at it as holy smokes, I'm now at halftime and I've seen an entire half of a team beating their opponent where I'm getting the money line at 3.0 up two scores. Is that a good bet or not? I actually can't tell you that right now. I haven't even seen the halftime adjustments yet. But as soon as I saw them come out in the third quarter and score again, that's where I'm going. I am getting ridiculous value on this particular team. If I bet them pregame, I think I might have gotten 15 to one on them. Maybe 20 to one on them and I got three to one. You could be like, well, this guy got a bad bet. It's like, no, I made an informed decision with information on that game and I don't want to know what they paid pregame. I don't want to know what the spread was I bet on the colorado money line on saturday at 1.9 or -110 that's when I ended up getting in on that.

Shane Mercer [00:37:04]:

I bet on that with you it right, exactly right.

Andrew Pace [00:37:06]:

So that's when I ended up getting in on that game and everyone's going nuts because they won a nine to one pregame. Well, it isn't that I don't buy the hype. I don't buy anything until I see what's going on on the field and we lose all the time as well, so this is to make it seem like, oh my God, this is such a bulletproof method. But the whole point is that you're taking wagers where the outcome is more likely than the ODS imply. Apply volume to that and then do really well. And with college football that's exactly what it is. It's volume. So you're able to hone in on these opportunities and maybe you don't end up honing in on them until the fourth quarter or until the second half. But that's okay. That's when you have the information that in my opinion you would need or require to make a successful decision regardless of the outcome.

Shane Mercer [00:37:55]:

John, Pace brought up a really interesting point there and I think a lot of sports bettors recreational and otherwise might be thinking to themselves, wait, hold on a second. What if I bet every single 15 to one pregame dog on a slate, right? If I get five or six of them hit, won't I be up? But what's the actual likelihood of that strategy working?

GosuThune [00:38:20]:

Yeah, a lot of people like to think that there's just kind of like blanket strategies where it's like, well, if I just do this every time then I'll eventually win. And that's just not how it is. The books are a little too they're a little too sharp for that and they vig you so hard that they're just taking money off every wager anyway. Right? Just from the juice. So it's all kind of built in. But yeah, I mean, Pace is 100% right, though. You have to abandon any assumption you had about something going into the game as soon as it's proven wrong and you can't go in. It's the squarest. Thing in the world. To think like this team's down, but they're four touchdown. Favorites. So they're just going to come back and win. I'm getting value on baylor -200 because they were -3000 before the game. And that's just not true. I think to me. What's valuable going into a game is knowing personnel and tendencies of a team and of the coach. Right. Pace would definitely agree that one thing we love to keep in mind is who's coaching a team and what decisions they like to make and that's information that we bring from past experience. So I try to expand that a little bit and do it with players and know kind of like the personnel of the teams. But you definitely don't need to do any of that to be successful. Live. And sometimes if you're not good at erasing some of that out of your memory, like if you just say, hey, this guy's a good quarterback, I feel confident he's going to come back, but he looks like crap the whole game. You've just cost yourself an opportunity by not accepting the fact that he's just not playing well and that I can find value around that today. Right?

Andrew Pace [00:40:02]:

Yeah, it's such a good point.

Shane Mercer [00:40:05]:

Okay Pace, we still got a full season, basically a full season of college football, not CFL college football ahead of us. What's the number one thing you're looking for to find value or capitalize on a marathon stream Saturday afternoon?

Andrew Pace [00:40:27]:

I'm looking for all the things that the public hate. So sometimes that can mean a really low scoring game, sometimes that can mean a really high scoring game even though the public does generally like that. But maybe there's a game where they believed that there wouldn't be a lot of points in the game leading to theoretical value on points to continue to be scored. That would kind of be my obvious answer. And then I'm looking for statistical advantages relative to an algorithm and I think that that is something that we really saw in week zero, we saw flashes of in week one, but with these rule changes I think that that's going to be an ongoing change. I'll give you a really quick example of something like that. Using an analogy that John already touched on, he said that in week 160 percent of the first half unders had won. Well where in the first half can we find the opportune moment to capitalize on the fact that the clock is running and the clock doesn't stop when they run out of bounds at minute three. So is there a point there that's contrary to the algorithm? I'm actually not answering that question. Those are the things that I'm looking for and then there's of know, testing and deploying some money in those spots and seeing whether or not it's working. And as John alluded to already, if you just go, oh great, like I'm going to be betting halftime unders this week as a blanket strategy, you're probably going to lose. Even though it hit at 60%, week one, you're probably going to lose. So yeah, those are the kind of things that I'm looking for and really excited for the year. I'm also looking at the collegiate level. We touched on fantasy football last week. I'm always looking at personnel and who's exciting me from the standpoint of being a fan and then potentially we might look at some futures. And I know John is a real big futures guy. He's got incredible data. So we might start honing in on someone for Heisman. We might start honing in on a particular team that has some value to win a division or potentially make the playoff win the national championship is a really challenging one because you have to beat out so many other teams and scenarios. But yeah, as well as that. So those are things that we'll keep an eye on. Joe Burrow being just such a good example. 200 to one preseason Heisman that won. But when you pay that much early on in the first few weeks this is where you actually don't necessarily think contrarian. You almost buy the Hype where the 200 to one guy might now be 40 or 50 to one, but you've seen him thump some of the best defenses in college football and you look at the schedule and go, if they win this game, he's going to be the Heisman favorite. Right? So things like that are always really exciting.

Shane Mercer [00:43:36]:

John, same question to you. What are you looking forward to most this season? Where do you expect to find the value and capitalize on it?

GosuThune [00:43:45]:

I think that this is going to be one of the highest parity seasons that we've had in college football in a while. And I think college football is in the last couple. The last decade has been it's just all the same teams that win all the time, and I think the teams at the top are kind of a step back from where they've been in the past year. So I'm looking for as like Pace set as the season goes on, looking at those Heisman, those to make the playoff type future bets, just looking at week to week like the traditional powers. I don't know that I think that they're as dominant this year as in years past where it's just so obvious. So I'm looking for stuff like that in the market where you can take advantage of one team drops a game here or there, and all of a sudden someone's live to win their division or their conference at a very big number that you never would have thought would be there. And I love trying to find those kinds of things like those little diamonds, those gyms in the middle of the season where you can get a big number on a future. So I'm really excited about that.

Shane Mercer [00:44:56]:

Wow. Parody is always exciting. That makes it that much more fun to watch. It does mean a little more chaos, but there's always ways to capitalize on that chaos. Anything else you guys want to add before we wrap up for this week? Pace, go ahead.

Andrew Pace [00:45:10]:

Yeah, so the NFL is here. We're going to be touching on the NFL next week on our show, which is really exciting. So if you're watching this on time, we've got the Chiefs against the Lions thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime. Amazon prime is the least latent stream, so that's always something that excites us at inplayLIVE, but we have a Survivor Pool at inplayLIVE. The pot crossed $20,000 last season. I think it's sitting at about ten today. We do have a rebuy that definitely fills the pot to a certain extent, but if you want to join our Survivor Pool, you can just send us a DM. Best to do it on Instagram at inplayLIVE and we'll give you the details to join. If you are looking to join us for football season this year, I highly recommend it. It's a ton of fun, so check us out. Use the promo code behind the Lines to join up and included with your subscription at inplayLIVE is a weekly DFS challenge throughout the NFL season where we give away a pretty cool prize to Vegas at the end of the season, to the person who wins the most DFS matches throughout the season. So that's something that we do at inplayLIVE that has returned. And it's a great time of year. It's back to school for the kids, and it's Christmas time for the adults.

Shane Mercer [00:46:22]:

Christmas time. Back to work. Back to the fun work. There we go. All right, guys. Yeah. So like Pace mentioned, next week, all things NFL and betting on NFL. Really excited for that episode. And we'll have week one behind us, so we'll have something to look at, something to evaluate and sort of really dig into. John, you're going to come back and join us for that?

GosuThune [00:46:43]:

I hope so.

Shane Mercer [00:46:44]:

All right, awesome. You're welcome back, budy. Okay, great. So we'll talk to both of you next week. Till then, keep eating those books, guys. Take it easy.

GosuThune [00:46:51]:

Thanks, guys.

Shane Mercer [00:46:53]:

Thanks for tuning into another episode of behind the Lines. Remember to, like, download and subscribe. We are on YouTube, Apple, Spotify and everywhere you get your podcasts. Have a betting story or want to be featured on our podcast, drop a note in the comments below. And if you want to join inplayLIVE. Use promo code 'BEHINDTHELINES'.