How to handicap the craziest football season in CFB history

So, I typically only bet college football, which allows me to put in the work to get a better sense of teams, conferences, and coaching staffs.  Bc of the amount of work, and time it takes to study 130 teams, most who are relying on players that were back ups a season ago.  So when a pandemic shut down all US sports (Including CFB spring football) It was really hard to put in the same amount of work as usual.  I've still been able to isolate several bets that I really like.  

So obviously the biggest issue is will there be a CFB season, and if there is what will the rosters look like?  Clemson already lost Justyn Ross, and then had +20 players with Covid. Bc of Covid being a medical issue, the media doesnt announce which players had the illness.  On top of the Covid issue, weve heard 3 superstars talk about not playing this season, including FSU DT superstar Marvin Wilson, RB Chubba Hubbard, and RB Kylin Hill.  There teammates have been supporting teammates, and alluded to skipping the season as well... Fortunately I think those players are going to play.  

Betting season win totals requires looking into what the sportsbooks policy is for cancelled games.  Depending on the team, I would feel way better taking a team to win a division/conference rather than exceeding win total.  A few yrs back the state of Florida had those devastating hurricanes, and all of the Florida schools missed at least one game.  Instead of taking Clemson over 11.5 wins, it might make more sense to take them to win the ACC, or make the playoffs (I could def imagine a situation where teams cancel their FCS games.) 

 I will be looking to bet on teams that return their entire coaching staff, a high level QB, teams with both experience, as well as returning production.  It's also critical to look at the past 2-3 recruiting classes, including transfers.  I also give teams that made a bowl game the previous season a bonus, especially if it was a new years bowl, and allowed the team to have those 15 extra practices.  This is even more benefical to the teams that recruited at a high level, since their freshman early enrollees were able to practice with the team.  In the case of Clemson, most of their FREAK top recruits enrolled early, and not only practiced with the team during their playoff run, they also began working w strength coach. Their season went until the mid of January, and their spring fball started earlier than most schools.  Their freshman were also able to participate in 11 spring practices, which is a huge advantage.  No other power 5 school other than Louisville had any spring practices.  Clemsons Freshman were essentially with the team from mid december to middle of march.  

If you're going to bet futures, its crucial that you look at which programs could overcome loss of starting QB.  Some of the teams i'd focus on are, Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tenn, SC, UNC, Texas, Tx AM, USC, Ohio State, Miami, ND, etc..

Im sorry if this doesnt make sense, but i havent slept in like 36 hrs

So alopez - do you think there will be a season...I have already received Lindy's, Athlon, and Street and Smith rags, but its hard to really dive in, not knowing if it will be for not...

I think the approach this year is to just focus on the more predictable teams with a predictable direction and have an easier time assessing covid / protest risks ... Service academies come to mind.. very consistent, same coaches, no protest risk (that im aware of) and will be following every covid rule to a T...

So with that let's take Navy's profile ..... zero spring practices... no voluntary workouts and reporting July 6th and everyone's quarantining for 2 weeks... so really late start.. first team practice not scheduled until first week of August and training up a new QB replacing 3k yd Malcolm Perry, the options look like are Soph WR Warren (likely more explosive) or Soph QB Olson (1 yr in the system 10 pass att's)  ..  Comparing to '18 Conf play the O ran roughly same number of plays but a pace and explosiveness surge led to 1.2 more O drives, scoring +18 PPG, +2 yards per play, 20% more TD drives, 11 more TD's from outside the RZ... on and on you get it... super surge in speed and explosiveness = 9-3 ATS, 7-5 O/U, 9-3 TT-Over... I still need to do the D-stat changes but they were much improved LY and bringing key folks back, would expect improvement... 

I'd expect this O to regresses way back in tempo/drives and efficiency early on maybe under the '18 numbers which were not good  ...likely see multiple QB's trying out vs ND week 1 since only 4 weeks of practice going in ... obvi we can't benchmark the ND game to LY for the O, I think we want to see which if any QB's actually have some timing down if any ... will be looking more to see if the D doesn't get obliterated again because Book crushed them through the air LY even when they were not bad vs the ND run.... 

Once everyone digests that likely disaster it's onto an FCS game (maybe cancelled?) and then 2 more weeks before a Tulane roadie and I think they'll be a reallllly strong D front this year I don't think they'll get ~400 yds rushing 7/att this time ... AF roadie the next week maybe another slug fest and then another bye.... I'd expect reallllly great coach Ken has the team especially the O much improved by then ... hopefully with a perception that the O has totally fallen apart as we head into heavier passing teams ECU, HOU, SMU, Tulsa.. If the O is at least controlling drives by then we expect Navy to start chewing up alot of clock vs these defenses.... so maybe see if we like them as a decent sized dog?... Unders?.. opponent team total unders?.... if we're not sure by then just enjoy the games... 

Run that diagnostic on each team and we'll find a few teams worth tracking and have a baseline knowledge of their opponents situations... Like Tulane kinda same situation... fast tempo LY but QB gone and we expect to see at least a strong aggressive D front, shouldn't be hard to read a few reports on the changes and worry more about covid / protest risks ...  If we go haphazard into this year we'll be making super square moves like devaluing home field advantage after a few home favs go bust with no fans in the seats and be on the wrong side ALOT...

Good luck buddy

I hope Phil Steele doesn't put out a pamplet 

No , It's the full sized edition , jam packed with testimonials of how " accurate "

his magazine has been for the last 22 years. 

Hahahaaa yeah Wise, every paragraph has a story about when in the last 10 years he nailed it on the whatever thing he's talking about ... But that's the preview mag biz ... take credit wherever you can ....

Interesting website on the accuracy is stassn , c o m ... has like 20 or so different cfb previews logged on a few different metrics like the division rank and top 25 over the years ... already has 2020's chart started with Phil, Lindys, Athlon and Street & Smiths... 

Pretty cool website if you want to compare preview mags and charts are very easy to copy into excel to play around with .. one thing I noticed is the level of group think these mags seem to have in ordering the conferences which kinda makes sense, previews don't want to go out on a limb when you're claim to fame is 'most accurate preview" ... the conference ranks already get mauled by numerous surprises over the season anyway... 

On the whole Phil, Athlon and ESPN FPI do a pretty good job and when you weed out the conferences that had tons of volatility in a particular year like the MAC last year they tend to be on the ball with things ... Also seems the mass preview mag media either has a beat on how these teams will be valued during the year or maybe more the case have some influence. Worth keeping in mind how good / bad these teams were all expected to be before betting into them during the season.. 

Good luck!

Bridge , You are absolutely correct. That preview mag stuff is a tough business .

I'll bet it's kinda hard for them to be " neutral " when they rank teams, and

they sure don't get a lot of credit for all of the work they put in collecting

all of that data for us so we can get a shot at picking a few winners.

But then , Sportsbetting is a tough business also. and we need all of the

help we can get. It's fair to give them some love and respect because

they've earned it.

If we bettors are respected by our Bookmakers , or more importantly,

our " action " is respected by our Bookmakers , that means that we will

have earned it as well. That is something for all of us  to aspire to.

New season , hopefully new opportunity. Let's get em this season.

Bridge 

Nice site Bridge! Thanks!!

Preview mags are tough.  You want to publish early to get more sales, but then you have less info to go on.

You wan't to be unbiased, but the big name schools have way more fans than other schools, and Texas/Notre Dame/SEC homer is not going to buy your magazine if you rate their team/conference too low.

Nailed it...

You're  spot on,  as usual 

Yeah Thorp no doubt, and I'll add when you see a huge publisher like Conde Naste is doing Street & Smith its a good bet that if you're the editor there you're boss won't care how accurate your rankings were in your next performance review...

I don't think Phil has the same ranking pressure as the others on the CVS magazine rack, he's probably the only one that doesn't even have the top 10 on the cover lol... I'd bet Phil is wayyyy more concerned about his relationships with the coaches and making sure he's always getting the all the roster scoops from them .. And then kinda makes sense when it seems he's not trying not to criticize too much.... I'll just say if I see a unit is getting one of his lower end compliments like 'as experienced as last year' or 'but should have better depth' or 'they could match last years numbers' then I'll try to read between the silver linings on those little more lol.... 

Ive basically given up on a college season at this point.  I could see conferences trying to pull it off, by cutting schedules in half.  By announcing an only conference schedule, these programs will also have the benefit of pushing the start of the season back several weeks/months.  It's possible there could be a vaccine by that point, but I think most of the people counting on the billions a CFB season generates are just praying that as the elections get closer the politicians who have handled the epidemic horrendously, and are now seeing huge increased in cases in their areas, that they will be forced to change their stance on how they deal with the virus... (For example, over the past few weeks, when Trump realized he had become a huge underdog against Biden in the 2020 election, his policy/stance on Covid has started to change drastically.

I'm not someone who likes to fight about politics, but if there's no CFB season this year, I hope huge masses of CFB fans go to the polls and make these politicians pay by voting them out of office, for their terrible display of leadership, which is preventing a sport 6 months after NYS and most of modern world had a handle on the situation... 

Clemson had 50 players test positive on their 1st day back on campus together.  The campus was still empty, and even with such limited interaction between players, half the roster was infected.  That was about 3 weeks ago, so I was kinda surprised when only 2 weeks ago, the city started to require social distancing as well as masks when going into a public place.... Since I live in a county where everybody has been living under those guidelines sinces mid march, I had assumed that these college football spokespeople who were so confident making bold claims about a CFB season, I figured they must have been living in areas with even tighter restrictions.  Unfortunately it seems like it was just a case of magical thinking