College Football Week 11 Pick’Em Strategy: 6 High-Value Upsets

November 9, 2011 - by David Hess

This post covers picking strategies for college football pick’em contests for Week 10 of the 2011-12 season, based on college football predictions from our algorithmic models and other relevant data such as public picking trends. It also complements the analysis and projections presented in our College Football Office Pool Analysis pages.

This commentary reflects predictions and public picking trends as of Wednesday afternoon. The pick recommendations on our Office Pool Picks pages will continue to update based on the latest available data until shortly before the first AP Top 25 game or official Yahoo! Pick’em game of the week. Make sure to check our Game Winner Pick’em and Spread Based Pick’Em pages for the latest.

Week 10 Highlighted Picks Recap

Last week our Odds-On Value picks went 5-1, which is a pretty decent haul. Our upset picks also had a good week, going 4-5, including 2-0 for our Low Risk Upset picks, which were the choices we recommended for most contestants.

Overall, our method of mostly staying conservative — but throwing in a couple carefully chosen upsets for those in larger pools — has worked out well, as our Conservative game winner picks are now beating 96.6% of all ESPN college football pick’em contestants. Our Aggressive picks are slightly behind, at the 91.2% level. Our Very Aggressive picks are further back, topping only 66% of competitors.

For spread-based pools, our advice last week was simple. For Conservative picks, use our projected cover odds to rank your teams. For Very Aggressive picks, go against the public in every game. And for a middle ground, those strategies are blended in our Aggressive picks. It was a fantastic week for our models, as the Conservative ATS picks went 16-11. The risks taken by the Aggressive and Very Aggressive strategies didn’t pan out, but they still went 13-14 and 14-13, respectively.

Those records, keep in mind, were against actual Vegas spreads. Most likely, your lines were a bit softer than those we compare against. Hopefully you picked up an extra game or two by using late line movement to your advantage, as detailed in our preseason pick’em strategy post.

College Football Week 11 Pick’em Strategy: Game Winners

It’s time for the Possible Game Winner Picks table. This valuable tool summarizes the info we use to make our recommendations. It’s based on our detailed pick’em analysis page, with only a couple tweaks.

First, we only show you the games where the public is undervaluing a team. Second, we add a “Value” column that shows the difference between projected win odds and public pick percentage — this is a key data point that tells us which teams give us the most bang for our buck. Third, we label the picks with a type that corresponds to the summary lists from our analysis page.

Team	Opponent	Win Odds	Public %	Value	Spread	Pick Type
Texas A&M	at Kansas St	56.70%	~15%	42%	-4.5	Odds-On Contrarian

Clemson	vs. Wake Forest	87.70%	~85%	3%	-16.5	Odds-On Value
Arkansas	vs. Tennessee	84.50%	~80%	4%	-14	Odds-On Value

Illinois	vs. Michigan	48.80%	~10%	39%	-1	Low Risk Upset
VA Tech	at GA Tech	49.90%	~40%	10%	-1	Low Risk Upset

Missouri	vs. Texas	44.90%	~15%	30%	+1	High Risk Upset
Pittsburgh	at Louisville	40.70%	~10%	31%	+2.5	High Risk Upset
Iowa	vs. Michigan St	40.50%	~10%	31%	+2.5	High Risk Upset
Florida	at S Carolina	41.20%	~15%	26%	--	High Risk Upset

Purdue	vs. Ohio State	33.90%	~5%	29%	+7	Long Shot Upset
Miami (FL)	at Florida St	25.50%	~5%	21%	+8.5	Long Shot Upset

We have one Odds-On Contrarian and two Odds-On Value picks this week. These are games where our favored team is being picked by less people than their win odds would suggest. In the case of the Odds-On Contrarian pick, the public actually favors the team that we think is more likely to lose, meaning you get to make a safe pick that has a large reward. We suggest you choose Texas A&M, Clemson, and Arkansas, and slightly boost their confidence points.

There are two Low Risk Upset picks this week, where we project a team to have sub-50% win odds, but they are so unpopular that they become worthwhile picks for people who need to make up ground on their conservative opponent. For those of you who are about 3 points behind, we’d suggest picking one or both of Illinois and Virginia Tech.

We also have several High Risk and Long Shot Upset picks. These are designed for those of you who are either in large pools (hundreds to thousands) or are far behind the leaders — basically, people that need to take some gambles. If we simulate the week 1,000 times, these picks will have a lower projected AVERAGE score, but they have higher highs and lower lows, and those highs have the best chance of giving you a significant boost over the competition. It’s a risky boom-or-bust strategy, but when you’re behind at this stage, you need to take some risks.

If you’re one of those that needs to gamble (behind by 5+), add one or two of those more risky upset picks, whichever strike your fancy. If you’re down by 8 or more points, you should probably choose several, and hope that you get extremely lucky.

College Football Week 11 Pick’em Strategy: Against the Spread

As with the last two weeks, our Conservative College Football Spread-Based Pick’em Picks are simply chosen based on our predicted cover odds. These should be fine for small or medium pools. A few of our highest confidence picks this week are:

Remember, though, what we mentioned in our last preseason football Pick’em strategy post — if your pool has a different spread than what we list, be sure to use that to your advantage, by picking the team that the line has moved towards. As an example, if the line in your pool is Oklahoma State -12, but the current line in Vegas is -14, the smart pick for you would be Oklahoma State. You’d be getting two “free points” compared to true market value.

In huge pools (thousands of people), the small difference in our projected cover odds (generally ranging only from 45% to 55%) should probably be outweighed by the need to pick against your opponents, especially when some teams are being backed by only ~5% of the public.

As a result, our Very Aggressive picks this week are simply going to assume that the Vegas lines are efficient, and then pick whichever team has less public support. That gives you the maximum differentiation from the crowd, while costing you relatively little in win odds.

If you can see the number of people who have chosen each team in your actual pool, pick the less popular squad. Otherwise, you can use our picks for guidance, since the same teams should be popular in most pools.

Our Aggressive picks are a midway point between these two strategies. This is a good pick set if you’re in a pool with several hundred to a thousand people, or if you want to place a little bit less emphasis on our projected cover odds.

We hope this has been helpful. Feel free to ask for specific advice in the comments!