Overreaction week has arrived in college football. Week 3 lines show a significant amount of recency bias based on what has happened to this point, especially the results that we just saw this past weekend. I have some big discrepancies between my lines and the market lines this week on teams like Washington State, Iowa, South Alabama and Florida.
Truthfully, this is the toughest part of the season to do power ratings. An internal debate rages on because you want to react to what you’ve seen, but you also spent a lot of time in the preseason studying these teams and two games simply may not tell that much of a story. On the other hand, the sportsbooks are obviously forced to adjust and they’re going to have to consider market sentiment, while also trying to not get burned by being too low or too high on a team.
***Top College Football Betting Resources***
*It's the VSiN Black Friday Special. Take advantage of the largest savings of the year by upgrading to VSiN Pro. For a limited time, you can secure Pro access until May 1st for only $60.*
- NCAAF Expert Picks
- NCAAF Betting Hub
- NCAAF 2024 Week-By-Week Schedule
- Parlay Calculator
- NCAAF Betting Splits
- NCAAF Betting Odds
Furthermore, we’re also still in the nonconference portion of the season for a lot of teams. Teams are jumping up a few weight classes from one week to the next or become a heavyweight taking on a featherweight. The wide range of opponents and outcomes makes this that much more challenging.
Finding that delicate balance is very tough to do, so you have to put together your numbers and then decide if you want to fire early in the week or wait to gather more information. For me, there are a few games that I like, but there are also other games where I really want to see where the line ends up. Before I get to those, a quick refresher…
My power ratings updates follow a three-step process. I compare my line to the closing line, study the box score and then crowdsource for injury information. I got a question from a reader last week about how to minimize overreaction and the best way to do that is by comparing your line to the closing line and then looking at how a game played out. Some teams may be as good or as bad as they’ve looked. Other teams won’t be. It’s up to each individual to decide which bucket a team falls into.
Here are my Week 3 Power Ratings:
