How are the BCS conferences acquitting themselves in the poinstpread department vs. non-conference play?  Though it doesn’t exactly portend the future, sports bettors want to know.

With the pointspread being hammered out by real money in a global marketplace, it is a reasonably accurate reflection of team strength and expectations. So the spread results are a good way to measure the relative strength of the conferences.

Obviously it doesn’t tell us everything.  USC shouldn’t be punished for having Washington State in the Pac Ten.  And it doesn’t tell us much about the Big 12 when Kansas fails to cover when they beat FIU by 30, but covers in a 29-point win over Louisiana Tech.  A TD with third stringers on the field would have changed the pointspread result in either game.

But it is hard to deny that the Pac Ten and Big 12 look formidable, while the ACC and Big East have underperformed.

Let’s look at the conference pointspread records.

Pac Ten            7-2 (77.7%)

Big 12              12-4 (75%)

SEC                   8-5-1 (61.5%)

Big 10               6-7 (46.1%)

ACC                   3-6-1 (33.3%)

Big East            0-10 (0%)

Why does the Pac Ten have fewer non-conference pointspread results?  It isn’t due to feasting on 1-AA opponents in unlined games.  In fact, the opposite is the case.  Rather than use the 12th game added a couple of years ago to fatten up on lower division opponents, the Pac Ten added an extra conference game.

With their full round-robin schedule, the Pac Ten plays fewer non-conference games than anyone else. There have been four conference games played already, and Stanford is already 1-1 in conference play.  With their cross-town rivalry not taking place until December 6th, USC and UCLA both had last Saturday off.

The Big East has been horrendous.  With an 0-10 pointspread mark and the average spread loss of -14.7 points per game (and that includes the TD margins that USF and UConn developed in overtime Saturday) the conference is barely competitive from top to bottom.

It will be interesting to see how predictive these standings are, not only as non-conference play winds down in the next couple of weeks, but come bowl season as well.

Going into the season I was going to be very leery of playing any Conference USA teams in non-conference games.  The defenses in that league were dreadful last year, and as a result the offenses were overrated heading into the season.

The run defenses were particularly horrendous.  In 2007 seven of the conference’s 12 teams ranked 90th or worse in run defense, giving up over 185 yards per game on the ground.  Six of those clubs gave up 4.75 yards per rush or more.

But did you notice the three starting NFL rookie running backs from CUSA in last weekend’s pro action?  Not only did all three score touchdowns, but two of them played key roles in leading their teams to wins.

Matt Forte (Tulane) ran for 123 yards for the Bears.  Chris Johnson (East Carolina) notched 93 yards on 15 carries for the Titans.  Kevin Smith (Central Florida) was somewhat less productive, gaining 48 yards on 16 carries as the opening day starter for the Lions. All three showed good versatility, as well, catching three or more passes.

Clearly there was a ton of backfield talent in CUSA last season. But don’t expect their departure to help those Conference USA defenses much, as the stop units have done very little stopping of the run in (mostly) non-conference play.  Thus far six clubs allow over 192 yards per game on the ground.  Seven are permitting opponents to go for over 4.7 yards per rush.

So while significant running back talent has departed for the NFL, a new crop of stars are ready to emerge, licking their chops at the soft Conference USA run defenses. That will attract the attention of scouts at draft time and next year in the NFL’s opening week rookie RB’s from Conference USA will…….

Ordinarily smart people are informing me of some weather related unders that are supposedly good plays in today’s college football and Sunday’s NFL.

But just because a forecast calls for some rain and wind at some point, if it isn’t happening during the game, it really doesn’t matter.

Let’s look at games supposedly “in the path” of Tropical Storm Hanna.  The weather is the current forecast for the three hours while the game is being played.

Buffalo at Pitt: Few showers 11 MPH winds.

Oregon State at Penn State: Showers, 9 MPH winds.

Georgia Tech at Boston College: Few showers, 9 MPH winds.

West Virginia at East Carolina: Greenville was hammered overnight but gametime here is 4:30 PM. Few showers, wind starting at 24 MPH and down to 14 MPH by the end of the game.

Ole’ Miss at Wake Forest:  Winston-Salem is west of Greenville and didn’t bear the brunt of the storm.  Mostly cloudy, 16 MPH.

UConn at Temple: Rain, 8-14 MPH winds.  Storm cranks up later this afternoon, after the game.

Rams at Eagles: Sunny, 10MPH winds.  Strorm that hits after Temple game is long gone by 1PM Sunday.

Chiefs at Patriots: Partly Cloudy, 10MPH winds.

While you can make a case that the East Carolina/West Virginia game might be a weather play, things may clear up there as well.   The first half under may be the best play in that one, so keep an eye on that game as the telecast comes on.  Maybe keep an eye on the winds at Wake Forest as well.

Overall, however, there’s been a real overreaction to the potential weather implications in many of these games, by people who just couldn’t be bothered to take the time to find out what the gametime forecast would be.

The NFL kicks off Thursday night, and quite frankly, you don’t have a clue.

Oh, you think you have a clue.  You’ve probably spent a good bit of time this summer studying the NFL.  You’ve looked at roster moves, at quarterback depth charts, and at young players ready to emerge.  You’ve poured over draft rankings, and have looked at starter-on-starter performance during the preseason.

And that goes double if you’re wasting your time participating in a fantasy football league.

But there’s a problem.  All your hard work is for naught.  You have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen.  After all, people with more knowledge than you, a more significant football background than you, and a direct line to decision makers around the league, have no idea what will happen.  So how could you?

I present to you ESPN’s panel of experts predictions prior to last season.   These journalists, analysts, and commentators cover the league full time. Several played in the league, and played well.  Yet they had no clue last season.  Just look at their 2007 NFL projections.

The Giants won the Super Bowl last year.  Yet all 12 of ESPN’s experts predicted that the New Yorkers would not even make the playoffs.

The Giants won at Green Bay to win the NFC Championship.  All 12 ESPNers predicted the Packers would not even make the playoffs.

In their first playoff game, the Giants won at Tampa Bay.  All 12 of ESPN’s experts predicted that the division-winning Bucs would not make the playoffs.

Conversely, the panel of experts unanimously projected that the Bears would win their division.  All 12 were wrong, as the Bears finished 7-9 and failed to make the postseason.

All 12 panelists had the Saints winning their division.  The 7-9 Saints failed to even make the playoffs.

In the AFC, the vast majority picked the Ravens and Broncos to make the playoffs.  Neither was even close.   And going back to previous years wouldn’t yield terribly different results, with very smart people making outlandishly wrong preseason predictions in the NFL.

NFL teams are so close in ability, and have so many players and coaches turn over every single year, it becomes a matter of chemistry. And chemistry is exceedingly tough to predict.

Sure, you can look at the Patriots and know they’re probably going to be good.  And you know the Falcons will mightily struggle (though their defense bears some watching), but the vast majority of NFL teams are probably within about a field goal of each other at this time.  Then injuries, player development, chemistry, coaching, and momentum will take hold and we’ll see some separation.

I’ve got a couple of games that I’m looking at in the NFL this weekend.  But I’ll be looking for reasons to be as lightly involved as possible.  In a week or two (and in some instances, in a day or two) we’ll have a much better handle on these teams.  And there’s a long season ahead of us, with plenty of NFL opportunity.

But this weekend we know nothing.  No matter how much you think you know, realize how limited your knowledge in.  As we open a very long season, don’t put yourself in a position to get hurt this weekend in the NFL.

With 15 teams of the Top 25 playing teams from 1-AA, the Sun Belt, or the MAC, it was difficult to learn a whole lot in the opening weekend of the college football season.  But it wasn’t a completely uneventful weekend…

ACC Awful: The ACC had a nasty weekend, with enormous nationally-televised losses by Virginia, Virginia Tech, Clemson, and NC State, who failed to cover the spread by a combined 86.5 points.  There was minor success in the conference, however. In their two least visible games against 1-A opposition, the ACC had impressive, pointspread covering road wins by Wake Forest over Baylor and Boston College over Kent State.

Big East Worse: The ACC made every effort to put the Big East out of the football business with their raid a few years ago, but did the Big East a favor this weekend. The ACC’s spotlight losses provided substantial cover for the Big East, which was even worse than the ACC.  Syracuse, Pitt, Louisville, and Rutgers not only all lost, but the last three were all favorites.  The 0-4 quartet underperformed the pointspread marketplace by a combined 80.5 points.

Whoops: But at least the Big East didn’t have parachutists land in the wrong stadium with the game ball.  Fortunately the North Carolina folks had some extra footballs, so the mistaken landing at Duke had no serious repurcussions.

Some Things Never Change: You may have noticed by the results of this weekend, Clemson is still coached by Tommy Bowden, Pitt is still coached by Dave Wannstedt, and Tennessee is still coached by Phil Fulmer.  In retrospect, wouldn’t those gentlemen love to have been one of the 34 1-A teams playing 1-AA opponents last weekend.

Virginia Tech Loss No Fluke: Don’t let the fact that a blocked punt returned for a TD decided the game take away from how substantially East Carolina outplayed Virginia Tech on Saturday.  Virginia Tech benefited from a return for a TD and a PAT return for 2-points themselves.  Pirates outgained Hokies 369-243 and were the better team on Saturday.

Not Your Father’s (or Your Slightly Older Brother’s) Bluegrass Battle: Kentucky and Louisville combined for 927 and 891 total yards in splitting their previous two matchups, but together tallied only 415 yards in their hideous Monday matchup.  Kentucky’s 27-2 win was largely due to their 5-1 turnover advantage, as the Wildcats converted only 13 first downs and won yardage by only 210-205.

Bama Slammer: Great job sandbagging his defense’s ability to the media by Nick Saban.  Offseason personnel issues left them with little defensive depth, or so the storyline went.  Yet despite this “lack of depth”, 21 Tidesmen appear in the “tackles” section of their box score.  Clemson’s Thunder and Lightning, supposedly the best RB duo since Craig James and Erik Dickerson were putting SMU over the salary cap, suffered through a futile evening behind an inexperienced offensive line. James Davis’ carries resulted in gains (mostly) of -1, 2, 2, 2, 2, and 6.   CJ Spiller’s only two carries resulted in +8 and -1.  Spiller did provide Clemson’s lone spark when he returned the second half kickoff for a TD.

Emerald State Blues: A long season may be in store for fans of Washington’s two Pac Ten entrants.  The Washington Huskies struggled to 242 yards of offense in their 44-10 whipping by Oregon, while Washington State managed only 196 yards in a 39-13 shellacking at the hands of Oklahoma State. Ty Willingham has surrounded ace quarterback Jake Locker with very little at UW, while Wazzou has a an experienced team that is changing offensive systems under new coach Paul Wulff.

Turnovers Fuel Upsets: Surprising results that were fueled by favorites suffering turnover margins of -3 or more included Stanford over Oregon State (0-3 turnover disadvantage), Louisiana Tech over Mississippi State (2-5), Bowling Green over Pitt (1-4), Arkansas State over Texas A&M (1-4), 1-AA Cal Poly over San Diego State (1-5), and Kentucky over Louisville (1-5).  The only one of those upsetters that outplayed their opponent on the line of scrimmage was Arkansas State, as the Indians had a suprising 255-133 rushing edge over the Aggies.

Dull Matchups On Tap: We don’t exactly a classic weekend ahead of us.  Not only do we not have a Top 25 vs. Top 25 matchup, but there isn’t a single Top 25 team favored by a touchdown or less this weekend.   But that doesn’t mean that there’s not some value to be had on the card, and we’ll be back tomorrow in an effort to help you find some of that value.