NFL Power Rankings Week 5
by Robert Ferringo - 10/5/2021

Compared to the average NFL head coach, my football knowledge is probably about 10 percent of what they know. Seriously. When it comes to schemes and nomenclature and all of the minutia of an actual NFL game plan, I would be completely lost. Any average NFL fan knows probably half as much as I do, and they would be lost too, so this isn’t some big revelation.

NFL Power Rankings Week 4
by Robert Ferringo - 9/28/2021

The general held consensus in the NFL right now is that rookie quarterbacks should start. Teams should invest heavily in selecting quarterbacks with high-ranking first round picks. And then those quarterbacks should be thrown into the fire as soon as humanly possible. You hear this nonsense espoused regularly by media bobbleheads and average fans, and there is no doubt that “draft ‘em and start ‘em” is the prevailing theory in the league.

NFL Power Rankings Week 3
by Robert Ferringo - 9/21/2021

I’m going to keep this week’s intro short and sweet. I’m on a working vacation (they are all working vacations; I literally work 365 days a year) down in Florida. And as soon as I wrap this up, I’m headed about 100 yards down to the beach. The sea is balm for my soul and my need for getting blackout drunk in the sand at 10 a.m. on a weekday is a part of my nature that, for this seven days, I no longer have to repress.

NFL Power Rankings Week 2
by Robert Ferringo - 9/14/2021

One down. Seventeen to go. Week 1 of the NFL season is in the books. For me, it was one of the best opening weekends I’ve ever had, going 13-3 on Sunday with an array of big plays, totals and teasers all coming through with relative ease. In fact, if you include Saturday’s college football success, I had one of the best football weekends, +4,300 on Saturday and Sunday combined, in the 50-year history of this company.

NFL Power Rankings Week 1
by Robert Ferringo - 9/7/2021

Normal. New Normal. Old Normal. Everywhere you turn, someone is trying to explain what “normal” is supposed to be. Normal at work. Normal at home. Normal in public. It’s all about getting back to “normal”. I’m tired of hearing about normal. So, I suppose it’s a good thing that the NFL season is back upon us. Because nothing about professional football betting is normal. Blown leads and bad beats. Backdoor covers and stacks of dollar bills.

2021 Tennessee Volunteers Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/30/2021

Josh Heupel is in. All the Volunteer players are out. The Jeremy Pruitt debacle came to its merciful conclusion after another losing season in Knoxville. Tennessee football continues to be an SEC punch line and has endured three losing seasons in the last four years. Heupel, who led Central Florida to a 28-8 mark over the past three seasons, has been brought in to pick up the pieces.

2021 Texas A&M Aggies Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/30/2021

head coach Jimbo Fisher boasted that the Aggies are going to “beat (Nick Saban’s) ass”. The noise continued through summer as the bobblehead media all suggested that Texas A&M is some kind of legitimate challenger to the Crimson Tide in the SEC West. And it reached a crescendo when the Aggies started the season ranked No. 6 in the country.

NFL Betting: Turnover Disparity Often Good Indicator of Team Regression or Ascension
by Robert Ferringo - 8/26/2021

“That’s why they play with a funny-shaped ball.” When I first started out as a football handicapper, I had a client that would e-mail me every few weeks to chat about this or that. He’d celebrate big weekends. He’d try to boost my confidence after bad ones. And when I was particularly frustrated by a bad beat or a brutal loss, his response was always the same: “That’s why they play with a funny-shaped ball.”

2021 Florida Gators Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/26/2021

I’m a big fan of Dan Mullen’s work on the field. All Mullen does is field quality teams in one of the most competitive conferences in football. He has gone 29-9 straight up in three years at Florida and has a 98-55 career record; all in the SEC. Mullen is legit. On its surface, last year’s 8-4 campaign seems like a nondescript year.

2021 Auburn Tigers Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/26/2021

Gus Malzahn soaked every last ounce of goodwill and benefit of the doubt out of his near miss in the 2014 National Championship Game. In the end, the Tigers faithful grew sick of Malzahn’s mediocrity, and he was finally cut loose after 2020’s COVID campaign. In comes Bryan Harsin, who has made his bones shepherding Boise State for the last seven seasons.

2021 Minnesota Golden Gophers Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/25/2021

I am bullish on the Golden Gophers this season. P.J. Fleck’s squad is one of the most experienced teams in the nation and just two years removed from an 11-2 campaign in 2019. Minnesota did slink back to a 3-4 season last fall. But they didn’t play poorly and weren’t nearly as big of a mess as other Big Ten underachievers like Wisconsin and Michigan last year.

2021 Michigan State Spartans Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/25/2021

I’m not a fan of Mel Tucker. At all. However, after Mark Dantonio’s odd departure from East Lansing last year, the Spartans felt like Tucker was the best option to turn the program around after dismal 2018 and 2019 campaigns. Tucker, whose college head-coaching resume prior to Michigan State was one unimpressive 5-7 season in Colorado, was able to lay his foundation during the odd 2020 COVID season. Now he’s hoping to take a small step forward and get the Spartans back to being competitive in the East.

2021 Maryland Terrapins Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/25/2021

Maryland’s 2020 season kind of summed it up as a microcosm of the Big Ten last year. The Terps pulled two of the biggest upsets in college football last year in back-to-back weeks. First they beat Minnesota in overtime, 45-44, as a 21-point underdog. Then they followed that up the following Saturday with a 35-19 win over Penn State in Happy Valley as a 27-point underdog.

2021 Illinois Fighting Illini Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/20/2021

I predicted in 2019 that Lovie Smith was not long for Champagne. Here we are two years later, and Smith is no more. However, Illinois may have failed upward in recruiting former Wisconsin headman Bret Bielema to resuscitate this woebegone program. Bielema, like everyone else in the Big Ten, is going to have a lot of experience to work with. Unfortunately he is not going to have a ton of talent, though.

Best Bets NFL Preseason: Wagering Advice and Tips
by Robert Ferringo - 8/18/2021

I used to think that betting on the NFL Preseason was somewhere between absurdity and insanity. Surely, only true degenerates and masochists are looking to put down actual money on a game that features fourth-string quarterbacks from the Mountain West running two-minute drills with receivers that will be moving furniture in a couple weeks.

2021 Northwestern Wildcats Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/10/2021

Not everyone suffered through the COVID season. Some teams, with Northwestern being at the top of the list, thrived in the bizarro reality that was 2020. The Wildcats went 7-2, nearly won the Big Ten Championship, and hammered SEC foe Auburn (35-19) in the Citrus Bowl. They finished the season in the Top 10 for the first time since the dream season of 1995.

2021 Purdue Boilermakers Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/10/2021

In 2019, I was all over a Purdue collapse. Their season win total coming into that season was 7.0, and they barely won half that number, easily cashing my ‘under’ ticket on them in the process. Things got even worse last season for the Boilermakers as they slogged their way to a 2-4 COVID-marred season. They are an afterthought in the Big Ten this year, which is to be expected for a program that has just one winning season in the last eight tries.

2021 Rutgers Scarlet Knights Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/10/2021

Most major mistakes in life you just have to live with. Do-overs are pretty rare. Yet Greg Schiano is getting a second chance and an opportunity to re-write his story. And if 2020 was any indication, he is going to make the most of it. Schiano put Rutgers football on the map in the mid-2000’s, taking one of the most embarrassing programs in college football and turning them into a Top 10 program. If I had not seen it happen with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed that it did.

2021 Nebraska Cornhuskers Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/10/2021

This feels like a now-or-never season for Nebraska and Scott Frost. I don’t think that Frost is on the proverbial hot seat. However, the shine is definitely off his star after three straight losing seasons. Frost arrived from Central Florida with pomp and parades. Now he needs to needs to start showing some significant returns or the Cornhuskers may have to at least think about what the next phase will be in their 20-year rebuilding period.

2021 AL West Predictions and Expert Betting Advice
by Robert Ferringo - 4/1/2021

Two years ago, the Houston Astros were -800 to win the American League West. Playing the regular season was a mere formality, and Houston ended up taking the division title with 107 wins and a 10-game margin over second-place Oakland. Last year Oakland won the West in the truncated 60-game season.