111: ATS summary
The FBS teams that are perfect and winless against the spread so far this college football season.
Given we’re near a half way point of the college football season, a lot of teams are beginning to grasp reality and let go of expectations.
For example, Kansas had a preseason win total of 8.5 in mid-August. The Jayhawks are 1-5 overall (0-5 against FBS teams) with only six games left this season1.
Vanderbilt exceeded its preseason win total of 2.5 in dramatic fashion over the weekend. The Commodores2 beat Alabama 40-36 Saturday and the fans dropped an anchor the goalpost in the damn river.
A team’s record against the spread can be a useful way to understand if that team is performing below or above expectations. And through October 5 games, there are nine FBS teams that are perfect against the spread and nine teams that are winless against the spread3.
Here are those teams . . .
A few notes on these teams
Army and Navy are both a perfect 4-0-0 against the spread and have won all of their games by double-digits. Something to note is both of these squads play Notre Dame later this season4. The Midshipmen play the Irish at MetLife Stadium, while Army plays the Irish at Yankee Stadium in late November.
Iowa State and BYU are both atop of the Big 12 standings and a perfect 4-0-0 against the spread. Because conference realignment is a boondoggle5, these two teams do not play each other this season, so the only meeting would be in the Big 12 title game in early December.
Purdue’s head coach Ryan Walters even admitted the Boilermakers are a bad football team. The Boilermakers have been double-digit underdogs in three games thus far, and lost those three games by a combined 123 points. Wow.
NC State and North Carolina are a combined 0-8-2 against the spread in FBS games this season. The two rivals often reach the same destination as programs despite taking different paths6. The late November meeting in Chapel Hill could be an all-time anxiety bowl.
While these against the spread records give us insight into team performance versus expectations, there's a silly conversation happening around the importance of wins and losses this season.
uPsEtS dOn’T mAtTeR aNyMoRe
It’s the first year of a 12-team playoff and people are quick to point out that upsets don’t matter anymore. Are you sure about that?7
Stupidity well packaged can sound like wisdom.
An Alabama loss doesn’t mean the Tide are eliminated from the playoff. But to say it doesn’t matter, speaks with a level of certainty that doesn’t exist.
Take another sport as an example. The Detroit Tigers were 55-63, 10 games back in the AL Wild Card race with a 0.2 percent chance of making the playoffs as of August 10 of this year.
The odds were so good that Detroit Free Press beat writer, Evan Petzold, booked a honeymoon to Greece for the first few weeks of October.
Detroit won 31 of its next 42 games. The Tigers made the playoffs and even beat the Astros twice in Houston to advance to the ALDS.
I’m sure its series sweep of the Seattle Mariners didn’t matter much on August 11, 12, and 13. But it mattered a hell of a lot more in September when the Tigers needed every win they could get to make the playoffs.
Sure, baseball's 162-game season is a different animal than college football's dozen or so games, but early-season results can matter in ways that we don't fully appreciate until later.
And when has how college football decides a champion ever made sense?
Predictions are often wrong because what is not taken into account. This is the first version of the 12-team playoff, and we all want to act like we know how it works and what it means.
You don’t know how the committee will seed the teams or the importance of playing or not playing a conference championship game. Upsets still matter, just maybe not in a way that you understand yet.
But it’s actually more fun to just enjoy the games.
You can find the code to generate this chart here. Plus, find other spreads and totals for the entire 2024 season over here: https://byc.evidence.app/college-football/spreads-and-totals/
Team Ratings are updated as of today with a new chart to compare percentiles across F+ and FPI rating systems. I’m working to update the app with fresh data daily this week as there are multiple weeknight games.
As for a recommendation this week, I just started listening to Wright Thompson’s new book The Barn after watching his interview on Pablo Torre Finds Out. Thompson’s previous work is outstanding, including the Luis Suarez and Tiger Woods profiles. This is a different book, but the interview sold me on giving it a listen.
Thanks for reading this far, and please subscribe if you so choose.
A fun fact is Kansas has a +15 point differential with a 1-5 record. The other way of looking at that information is that Kansas is 0-5 against FBS competition with a -28 point differential. The Jayhawks did beat Lindenwood 48-3 to open the season.
The numbers used in this post are from cfbfastR and the Bovada provider. It’s absolutely possible you or others bet these teams at sportbooks with different spreads, so please keep that in mind. For example, this data has North Carolina as a favorite over Duke when other books had the Blue Devils as a 1.5 point favorite. So, take these with a grain of salt and shop around for good prices if you’re betting responsibly.
It would be objectively funny if Notre Dame missed the playoffs due to losses from teams from the MAC (Northern Illinois) and American (Navy or Army) while choosing not to play in a conference.
The Big 12 having games between teams in the same conference that do not count as conference games is annoying (Baylor/Utah, Kansas State/Arizona).
Both of these coaching tenures feel quite constipated. Not a compliment!
I watched best of Detroiters from Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson multiple times writing this post. Also, if you’re complaining that upsets don’t matter and then later whining about an officiating conspiracy from the league office, maybe take a few breaths and consider you might not always be right about everything.