betting lines

Sponsor Note. It's that time of year again! The time of year when, overcome with some nonsense on the final play of a game, you wander into the street after one or several too many and do regrettable things to BoJack Policehorseman that land you in the slammer. And I cannot emphasize enough: if this happens do you DO NOT CALL RICHARD HOEG, LAWYER.

Mr. Hoeg isn't that kind of lawyer. He cannot get you out of a jam. He does not know any bail bondsmen. He can file incorporation papers for you, which is of absolutely no use when you are being held in the county lock-up for shenanigans that, while delightful in the moment, are certainly illegal.

HoegLaw could talk to you about Michigan's prospects in the NCAA tournament after the precipitating events, and that's not nothing, but really if you're going to call HoegLaw it should be because you want someone to look over a contract, or draft one, or help you when an existing contract goes sideways. These are his areas of expertise.

So I must repeat: if you find yourself in jail, remember this number: (734) 263-1001, because under no circumstances should you call it.

TEN YEAAAARS. Ten years ago today on this here site:

MBB: So… you look good.

Tourney: Thank you, you may have, uh—

TEN YEARS, MAN! TEN! Where have you been for ten years?

MBB: I freaked out… hired Brian Ellerbe. Recruited Avery Queen and Kevin Gaines and Maurice Searight. Got put on probation for kids taking money from a Detroit gambling kingpin. Fired Ellerbe and hired a guy who took a Sweet 16 team that returned virtually everyone and added an NBA lottery pick to the NIT: Tommy Amaker. Recruited Anthony Wright and Kendrick Price and Reed Baker. Turned the ball over on every other offensive possession for six years. The one year I was going to be back everyone got injured and the starting point guard got suspended for some sort of domestic violence thing. Walk-ons started at point guard. Then I hired John Beilein. We have basically one guy taller than 6'5", we still have walk-ons at point guard, and we're here.

It is impossible to overstate how much different the basketball is now. It is very different.

If you'd like a less silly take on Michigan's first bid in a decade, The Athletic's Chris Burke may be your speed. You may remember that those rat bastards announced the field such that Michigan was the very last at large team announced:

A little after 6:30 p.m. ET, a good half-hour after the Selection Show began, Gumbel brought CBS back from break and introduced the South Region. The final quarter of the bracket. Realistically, there were five spots — seeds 8 through 12 — where Michigan could land, but at least two of those were reserved for the remaining mid-major conference-tournament champions and their guaranteed bids.

The 8-9 matchup came and went (LSU vs. Butler), as did the 12 seed (Sun Belt champ Western Kentucky). CBS’ graphic shifted down to the bottom half of the bracket to reveal an Oklahoma-Morgan State matchup at 2-15.

Gumbel kept rolling. “The No. 7 seed in the South, the Clemson Tigers, the seventh team out of the ACC. Oliver Purnell has now led three different schools to the NCAA Tournament …”

Call it a premonition, call it desperation, but as Gumbel read through his Clemson blurb, a buzz grew in the Crisler crowd. Maize Ragers jumped up and down, with shouts of “Come on!” and “Let’s go!” as if it were possible to will Michigan into the bracket. Sims started clapping along. Harris and senior forward Jevohn Shepherd leaned back, Shepherd with his hands on his head.

“… And they will face, coming out of Ann Arbor, the seventh Big Ten team, the Michigan Wolverines.”

I was dying for this whole period.

[After THE JUMP: a different world man]

pic.twitter.com/VmK3GkOnXY

— Purdue Sports Turf (@PUSportsTurf) October 4, 2016

A little on the nose there, God. Let's check in with goings-on in West Lafayette:

Purdue Football is Literally Being Sucked Into The Earth

It is either a busted pipe or a hellmouth opening to end our misery

It is strongly implied that Hammer and Rails would prefer the latter.

What is your favorite color?. It's coming up: a visit to Cable Subscribers Stadium.

ANN ARBOR – Facing fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line, Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh kept his offense on the field.

He also provided an assist by waving his arms to quiet the Michigan Stadium crowd, and they obliged, just before Khalid Hill plunged into the end zone to cap the Wolverines' opening drive in a 49-10 win over Penn State two weeks ago.

Crowd control is just one benefit of playing at home, which the No. 4 Wolverines (5-0, 2-0 Big Ten) won't have for the first time this season when they travel to Rutgers (2-3, 0-2 Big Ten) for Saturday's 7 p.m. kickoff.

A valiant attempt to inject some interesting into a game with a four-touchdown spread, but that stadium will be half Michigan fans. Michigan won't get its first real road test until the Michigan State game, and, uh... I am not going to put some #disrespekt on it just yet. Suffice it to say that that doesn't seem like quite as high of a mountain five weeks into the season.

The gently rising foothills that will take us to The Game. S&P+ likes us. S&P+ does not like Michigan State and Iowa, and hoo boy did Bill Connelly hear a lot about that latter this offseason. With both those teams underperforming even the modest expectations placed on them by fancystats, Michigan's journey to Football Armageddon II looks downright likely. Absurdly so, in fact.

Michigan is a better than two-touchdown favorite and 87%+ to win all of those games except the trip to Iowa City. OSU has a near-identical closing stretch, with the part of potential spoiler played by Wisconsin.

MSU? Well, if those numbers hold they'll be striving for something all season.

Probability of finishing 11-1 or better: 0.0%

Probability of finishing 6-6 or better: 44.7%

Bowl eligibility.

This is going to go well. Immovable object, meet a breathy gasp:

Rutgers can't throw the football
And with Janarion Grant out for the year, there aren't many great options to catch it either. The Scarlet Knights have basically had a pitiful passing attack all year. But last week against Ohio State had to be rock bottom. Rutgers was just 3 of 16 for 33 yards. As a team, the Scarlet Knights are completing 47.4 percent of their passes.

I wonder if we'll see this at some point. Per a Harbaugh interview on 97.1 last week, Jabrill Peppers is inventing new ways to football:

"We put a different play in with him yesterday in practice. Then he got it in the meeting and he left, went back to the defensive meeting and came out to practice," Harbaugh said Thursday on 97.1-FM. "He was a running back and his assignment was to block. But he blocked and then he went out for a route. He got his blocking assignment done and then he continued out into a route. We threw it to him, which was not the design, but from now on -- and we've been running this play for 10 years -- (it will be).

"In 10 years, we've never had a back who got his blocking assignment done (on that play) and got into the route at the same time and he did it the first time like that was the way the play should've been run for the last 10 years. That's the kind of stuff he does. It breaks the mold darn near every time he does something."

We'd have to see Peppers actually get a touch to do so, grumble grumble.

An interesting thing on "team opens at X". Last week I told people that Michigan opened at –9 and moved to –10.5. This turns out to not be accurate. These days most people are hitting up Vegas Insider for their odds, and what happens is one obscure online sportsbook getting out in front of the pack:

Lots of people bet online even though it’s super illegal, and that’s probably where Vegas Insider is getting their info, and that’s what Joe Truthteller means by “Vegas.” You are kind of right:

It’s mostly blank spaces on that chart, too. The only major sports book offering anything is on-the-nose-named BetOnline, which rushes to get their lines out before anyone else each Sunday. ...

BetOnline knows they are taking a major risk by offering super early lines, which is why they ramp down the maximum bets until the other (sharper) line originators have a chance to chime in. ...

The main reason I object to referring to the BetOnline number as the opening line, however, is because every single week, the same annoying pattern plays out. BetOnline will release a relatively weak line on many games. A few hours later, the major Vegas originators will weigh in with sharper lines that differ by maybe as many as six points. Twitter people will then talk about how “sharps have pounded the line down to X” or “Vegas has moved the line already.”

A quick shift in the odds is an early line that is superseded by the heavy hitters. Michigan really opened at –10.5 and stuck there, but you could get a small bet in at a dubious online casino at –9. The end.

This week in targeting roulette. Penn State's Curtis Cothran got the boot for a hit almost identical to Branch on Morelli minus about half the force:

I don't see helmet contact, but I can see how the officials did on the Curtis Cothran ejection. It's very close. pic.twitter.com/L2cq9B0hyt

— Greg Pickel (@GregPickel) October 2, 2016

That was upheld despite an apparent lack of helmet to helmet contact. Meanwhile Malik McDowell was ejected for making sure his helmet was well out of the quarterback's strike zone:

This is the hit that got Malik McDowell ejected from the game ... Unbelievable.https://t.co/mE0WTGCNyN

— Rob Donaldson (@DraftCharge) October 2, 2016

Sometimes you can't win: Cothran hit with his eyes on the target and got booted. McDowell seemingly went out of his way to keep his head down and got booted.

I've seen some assertions that the McDowell hit was indeed targeting because McDowell lowered his head like that (and hit the guy with his shoulder), but the rule seems to specifically state that targeting requires a hit to the head:

No player shall target and make forcible contact to the head or neck area of a defenseless opponent (See Note 2 below) with the helmet, forearm, hand, fist, elbow or shoulder. This foul requires that there be at least one indicator of targeting (See Note 1 below).

It then goes on to clarify what hits to the head are covered by this in note 1, where the crown of helmet thing comes in:

Note 1: "Targeting" means that a player takes aim at an opponent for purposes of attacking with forcible contact that goes beyond making a legal tackle or a legal block or playing the ball. Some indicators of targeting include but are not limited to:

• Launch—a player leaving his feet to attack an opponent by an upward and forward thrust of the body to make forcible contact in the head or neck area
• A crouch followed by an upward and forward thrust to attack with forcible contact at the head or neck area, even though one or both feet are still on the ground
• Leading with helmet, shoulder, forearm, fist, hand or elbow to attack with forcible contact at the head or neck area
• Lowering the head before attacking by initiating forcible contact with the crown of the helmet

I guess the fourth bullet point here does not mention the head and neck, therefore any contact with the crown is targeting, and that's why McDowell got booted? If so that's some terrible wording. It should probably be a similar penalty with its own definition, because lumping what McDowell did in with a rule otherwise very specifically about whacking people in the head is bound to cause confusion.

Etc.: Early NHL draft rankings include four Michigan players and commits. The Supreme Court will not hear the O'Bannon case, leaving both sides disappointed. The NCAA has been declared in violation of anti-trust laws but the 9th Circuit decision leaves everyone in limbo. Trevor Siemian! Still happening! Trying to find OSU weaknesses. Indiana's win over MSU was not a fluke. Minnesota focused on taking out the most dangerous part of PSU's team. Basketball media day takeaways.

(Guess what? I published a book this offseason. It’s about baseball. The Cubs. The White Sox. And that one time they played each other in the World Series. Check it out. It’s only available via Amazon Kindle right now, but a print on demand option is coming soon)

Jabrill Peppers leads the nation in tackles for loss and punt return yards. We all knew that. But I liked typing that out. And reading it over and over and over……

How has the unique start to his season impacted the Heisman race? His odds to win the trophy have fallen from 25/1 to 20/1. There were seven players with shorter odds than Peppers in the preseason. There are still five players ahead of him now. Two players, Lamar Jackson and Greg Ward Jr., have jumped ahead of him on the board. Ward Jr. has gone from 35/1 to 18/1. Meanwhile, Jackson is now the overwhelming betting favorite at –225 after starting out as a 50/1 three weeks ago. Below is a list of the top-6 betting favorites and their opening preseason odds.

Candidate	Current Odds	Preseason Odds
Lamar Jackson	-225	5000
Christian McCaffrey	600	600
JT Barrett	650	1100
Deshaun Watson	800	400
Greg Ward Jr.	1800	3500
Jabrill Peppers	2000	2500

I like the steadiness of McCaffrey. He started 6/1 and remains 6/1. Other notable odds not seen above: Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield started the season at 10/1 with the fifth shortest odds available. Today, he’s not even listed on the updated betting board. Had we made this chart a week ago, Florida State’s Dalvin Cook and Deondre Francis would have both been in the top-6. However in the wake of the Noles beatdown at the hands of Louisville, both have dropped. Francis began the season as a 60/1 shot, but was down to 12/1 a week ago after his hot start. Like Mayfield, he is no longer on the betting board. Cook remains in contention, although his odds have been falling all season. He opened at 8/1, was 12/1 a week ago, and today you can get Florida State’s star tailback at 33/1. For perspective, San Diego State tailback Donnel Pumphrey is just ahead of him at 25/1.

[Hit THE JUMP for things more interesting than Heisman odds]