Tighter lines, provocative predictions for NCAA football by Ted Sevransky

Last month we saw NFL season win totals hit the betting boards in town, drawing a significant initial flurry of heavy wiseguy money.

This past week, we saw another clear sign that football is just around the corner, as the Golden Nugget released their lines on more than 110 Games of the Year.

The Nugget is not generally a hotbed of wiseguy betting activity, but their sports book takes center stage as the first place to post college football game point spreads around this time every year. Last year, the book wrote more than $200,000 in handle on the very first day the college lines were posted. This year, the betting volume was a little bit slower for several reasons.

First, in 2011 the book opened their college football numbers at noon on Friday and the place was packed right from the get-go. This year, the numbers opened at 10 a.m. on a Monday resulting in “slow and steady” action as opposed to the “fast and furious” the year before.

Second, according to several professional bettors I spoke with, this year’s Nugget lines were tighter. We didn’t see four, five or six-point line moves from multiple bets on the same team in the same game like in 2011. The Nugget’s power ratings were closer to those of the bettors they were battling against.

Plain and simple – stronger numbers equals fewer bets. I’m quite certain management was content to make that trade-off. The Nugget made one structural adjustment sharp bettors definitely appreciated – opening multiple betting windows. The change eliminated delays from long lines and allowed more than one bettor to get down their wager against the opening numbers at the same time. When I got to the sports book less than 90 minutes after the openers were posted, the place was busy but not bustling. Brian Blessing’s Sportsbook Radio show attracted the lion’s share of attention.

Teams taking wiseguy money in multiple games within the first few hours of betting were Florida, Ohio State, Texas, LSU and Tennessee. Bet-against money in multiple games involved Alabama, Notre Dame, West Virginia, South Carolina and Oklahoma.

Why the strong wiseguy opinions on or against those 10? Not an easy one to answer since each bettor makes an individual decision on which games to bet. There is no clearinghouse for information – bettors are competing against one another to get the best numbers every bit as much as competing against the sports book itself.

Bottom line – the money does the talking.

It’s no accident the Nugget’s opening numbers were posted within days of Phil Steele’s 2012 College Football Preview magazine arriving on newsstands and in mailboxes all around Las Vegas. The Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook is considered to be the preseason bible for college hoops; a publication that most assuredly affects early season point spreads.

Steele’s influence on the early college football betting market is similar in its scope. Bettors read it cover to cover and expect others will be doing likewise. The research and offseason work on Steele’s college football is considered as good or better than anything out there as an overview. His rankings and predictions are certainly influential.

Steele has Ohio State and Tennessee among the Top 6 most improved teams this year. After finishing tied for sixth place in the Big 12 last year and last in the South Division in 2010, Steele has the Texas Longhorns ranked ahead of Oklahoma State; the projected second place team in the conference.

Steele has Florida winning the SEC East, a dramatic improvement off a 7-9 SU record in league play over the past two seasons. And he has LSU at the top in the SEC West, expecting them to pick up where they left off last year as national title contenders.

To summarize, all five teams that took big early money were ones Steele was bullish on. On the other end, many of the bet-against teams in early betting action were squads that Steele was looking to fade in 2012.

Steele cautioned bettors that West Virginia “probably will not match LY’s 10-win total.” He has South Carolina returning to mediocrity in the SEC East after winning the division two years ago and coming in second with a 6-2 SEC mark last year.

While Steele’s influence cannot be denied, bettors aren’t shy about disagreeing with him. In recent years, Steele has overvalued Oklahoma repeatedly. This year he has them No. 2 in the country behind only Florida State.

Early bettors didn’t seem to agree, wagering against the Sooners on opening day for the college football markets.

It was a similar story with Alabama, a team Steele ranked fifth. Bettors looked at the enormous graduation losses suffered by the defending national champs – five of the top 35 picks in the NFL Draft played for Nick Saban – and concluded that the Crimson Tide were ripe for a fall.

Notre Dame is a different story, with multiple issues involved in their initial fade from the wiseguys.

According to Steele (who compiles his recruiting rankings based on a composite of the numerous services that rank high school players), the Fighting Irish have enjoyed four Top 7 recruiting classes in the last five years, with a Top 15 class in the other year.

In other words, Notre Dame should have the talent to be competing for national championships right now. But the Irish haven’t been competing for national titles since Lou Holtz left town more than 15 years ago – enjoying only two seasons with 10 wins over the past 18 years and none with less than three losses during that span.

The national recruiting rankings are always high for the Irish, but the results haven’t matched the supposed talent level. What gives?

Wiseguy bettors seem to think there’s some circular logic behind the Irish’s consistently high recruiting rankings – the talent level in South Bend in terms of both size and speed isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. One theory is high school player rankings are often categorized by which teams are recruiting those players.

Notre Dame still holds a tremendous reputation among the scouting services. So when the Irish recruit someone, their ranking goes up a notch or two, regardless of their talent level.

Repeat this process dozens of times over nearly two decades and you get the current state of Notre Dame football. It’s good, but not great.

Certainly not a team that lives up to expectations. The Irish haven’t enjoyed a season with more than seven ATS wins since 2002, Ty Willingham’s first season on the job.

Notre Dame also faces what Steele calls the single toughest schedule in the country.

There’s not a single “patsy” on their 12-game slate. When we put it all together, the wiseguys’ fade of Notre Dame can’t be considered a surprise.

A team that has been consistently overrated and likely to be worn down fairly early thanks to their tough schedule is one sharp bettors clearly look to fade right from the get-go.

We’ll see how things change when my column returns July 10.

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