Week 15 Power Rankings, Ratings and Odds
Bowl season is an altogether different beast. It is a remarkably unique subset of not only college football games, but of games across the entire world of sports. Motivation will be an angle talked about a lot, but we’re also going to have a lot of key players that opt out with an eye towards the NFL Draft or opt out because they’re looking to hit the transfer portal.
We’ve also got all sorts of coaches either leaving interims in charge or coaching with more than one foot out the door. We also have coordinators on the move that are taking the same position elsewhere or are being elevated to head coach at another program. There are so many intangible factors that come into play during the bowl season and you have to try and keep up with so much news.
I still put together power ratings for the bowl games, but they carry a lot less weight for me than they do during the regular season. Obviously there are all of the considerations listed above, but also you have teams stepping out of conference for the first time since September in some cases. You have huge strength of schedule mismatches. You have teams that simply recruit at a far higher level than others. You also have no familiarity or track record between the programs to know how they match up.
However, I do believe that, in spite of it all, the bowl season offers some of the best betting opportunities of the season. Everything that we do in gambling is an educated guess and your degree of confidence is based on how much of an education you’ve given yourself on the game. Bowl season features more leaps of faith, but all of these factors create a lot of uncertainty and successful bettors love uncertainty. They love a market that is inefficient. They love a market that will vary greatly in the lead-up to the game.
Think about it. We’ve got lines on bowl games that are out two, three or four weeks in advance of the game. A lot can happen in that timeframe. Limits progressively increase on the games as they get closer, so established, influential bettors can manipulate and massage lines to get them where they want by the time the highest limits are being offered. It is a fascinating time of the year to say the least.
Here are the bowl games and my lines on them: