NFL Power Rankings Week 8
by Robert Ferringo - 10/24/2017

I have been doing Doc's Sports Power Rankings for 13 years. And during that time one of my goals each year is stability. I like to take the early-season chaos of wins and loses and, eventually, settle towards a period of stasis with my rankings.

Oklahoma State Cowboys at Texas Longhorns Expert Picks with Odds and Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 10/18/2017

Handicapping college football is all about the week after. I know that might sound a little Zen. But the fact is that college football players are erratic. And their performance one week has a direct impact on their effort and execution the next week. The only way to successfully handicap a team is to try to predict how they will respond to the success or failure of the previous week, weighted against other motivational and situational factors at play for the upcoming game.

NFL Power Rankings Week 7
by Robert Ferringo - 10/17/2017

Last week I said that Week 6 would be full of surprises and that the massive spreads would create some opportunities. That was exactly the case, as all four teams that were favored by 9.5 or more points - the Patriots, Falcons, Redskins and Broncos - all failed to cover the spread. Two of those teams lost outright as double-digit favorites and the end result was the first windfall weekend for the sportsbooks on this NFL season.

Robert Ferringo College Basketball Betting: 10 Years Of Dominance
by Robert Ferringo - 10/16/2017

Anyone that has ever gambled on sports can tell you that certainty is an illusion. It's a myth. The Legend of The Sure Thing. All manner of chaos exists in the mathematics of both sports and betting. And the reality is that death and taxes are still the only certainties in life.

TCU Horned Frogs at Kansas State Wildcats Expert Picks with Odds and Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 10/11/2017

If I've said it once I've said it $100 times: Bill Snyder is a god damn national treasure. And I really can't say it enough because Snyder is one of the best coaches in college football history. Not only that, but Snyder has been one of the best moneymakers in the sport during his time in Manhattan. And now Snyder has a chance to claim another major scalp and add to his legendary resume when another Top 10 team rolls into town this weekend.

NFL Power Rankings Week 6
by Robert Ferringo - 10/10/2017

Last week was another example of the volatile nature of the NFL. After a month of the players pounding the sportsbooks, Las Vegas got its revenge thanks to a host of high-profile losses in games with one-sided action. The Steelers losing by 21 points at home to the lowly Jaguars was by far the most befuddling result of the weekend. But the Bills, the Giants, the Texans and the Cowboys all cost the players big by losing in gut-wrenching style.

Washington State Cougars at Oregon Ducks Expert Picks with Odds and Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 10/4/2017

While Oregon is licking its wounds, Washington State is flying high. I know it is generally the other way around with ducks and cougars - especially THESE Ducks and Cougars - but that's how backwards things have gotten between these programs over the past several years. No. 11 Washington State heads to Autzen Stadium to take on Oregon at 8 p.m. on Saturday in a key Pac-12 North clash. The Cougars are a slim two-point favorite and the total is set at 61.5.

NFL Power Rankings Week 5
by Robert Ferringo - 10/3/2017

The Gambling Gods giveth, and the Gambling Gods taketh away. I have seen all manner of insanity occur in the final seconds of sporting events. If you bet on sports as much as I have for as long as I have, you eventually get to the point where you think you've seen it all. However, even I was left dumbfounded and speechless at the last five seconds of the Redskins-Chiefs game on Monday Night Football.

Georgia Bulldogs at Tennessee Volunteers Expert Picks with Odds and Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 9/26/2017

The last time Georgia and Tennessee met, college football fans - and bettors - were treated with one of the most bizarre endings of the college football season. The Bulldogs and Volunteers traded Hail Mary's in the final 10 seconds, and Tennessee, with Georgia scoring on a wild 47-yard touchdown with 10 seconds left, followed by Tennessee scoring the game winner on a 43-yard touchdown pass at the buzzer. The Volunteers erased a 10-point fourth quarter deficit and pulled off a wild road win in Athens.

NFL Power Rankings Week 4
by Robert Ferringo - 9/26/2017

All I read about last week (and even touched on myself in this very space) was how awful the NFL had been through two weeks of the season. Scoring was way, way down and the games had lost a lot of their luster as a result. However, it is one thing to make an aesthetic argument against pro football, as I did, and it is another thing to really dig into the nuts and bolts of the statistics behind the NFL's early season scoring drought. And the more I read about the scoring dearth the clearer it became: the NFL was primed for a rebound.

Penn State Nittany Lions at Iowa Hawkeyes Expert Picks with Odds and Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 9/20/2017

Danger lurks at night in the Iowa corn fields. Not in the shadows. But in the bright lights of Kimmick Stadium. After their resurrection in 2016, Penn State entered the 2017 season as legitimate National Championship contenders. And through three games they haven't disappointed, winning all three by a combined score of 141-14. But now the Nittany Lions are facing their first true test when they take on Iowa in an evening kickoff that is sure to rouse some rabble in the Hawkeye State.

NFL Power Rankings Week 3
by Robert Ferringo - 9/19/2017

NFL fans and bettors were forced to suffer through another round of uninspirting and unwatchable action in Week 2, with the Houston-Cincinnati, Buffalo-Carolina, Cleveland-Baltimore, San Francisco-Seattle, Arizona-Indianapolis and Detroit-New York games combining to average just 25.3 total points per game. And I'm not just cherry-picking some poor results. Those six games represent nearly half the league. And several other marquee games - Patriots-Saints, Cowboys-Broncos and Packers-Falcons - were blowouts that were essentially over before halftime.

Kentucky Wildcats at South Carolina Gamecocks Expert Picks with Odds and Predictions
by Robert Ferringo - 9/13/2017

All offseason I suggested that people were missing the most interesting part of the SEC race. It wasn't the three teams with the best preseason odds to win the East and subsequently get thrashed by Alabama in the title game. Instead, the more intriguing storylines concerned the four teams pegged for the bottom of the conference: South Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri and Vanderbilt.

NFL Power Rankings Week 2
by Robert Ferringo - 9/12/2017

Overreaction Monday is a very real and normal thing in the NFL. An impressive level of freak-out always accompanies the end of the first game of any NFL season, with massive leaps in logic and changes in expectations replacing rational thought. "The Patriots have issues!" "The Jaguars are for real!" "Jared Goff is a star in the making!" Those are all headlines and takeaways that otherwise sane people would glean from Week 1's results.

NFL Power Rankings Week 1
by Robert Ferringo - 9/6/2017

Football will not save us. We plunge headlong into The Fall. The known horrors of winter are deep on the horizon but approaching with certainty. Although they are almost a trifle compared to the open corruption, paranoia, demagoguery and hypocrisy that continue to flood our systems. But football is not a balm. Football is not a distraction. It is not some pet to be played with. It is not a game. Professional football is a monolith.

Expert NFL Handicapping: Five Reasons to Fade the Oakland Raiders in 2017
by Robert Ferringo - 9/5/2017

The NFL has always been a little more exciting when the Raiders have been prominently involved. Every good story needs a proper villain. And the Oakland Raiders have been professional football's reprobates through most of their existence. Yet during a prolonged period of pathetic football - they went 56-136 over a 12-year period from 2003-2014 - the Raiders had become a joke, an afterthought, and a relic of a bygone era.

2017 Big 12 Football Predictions with Betting Odds and Expert Analysis
by Robert Ferringo - 8/30/2017

The Big 12 has five teams currently in the Top 25, and a sixth (TCU) is the next team off the list. The league has only 10 teams. So if six of them are among the best 26 squads in the country then that makes the league the densest group of talent in the nation. And because the Big 12 plays a true round robin format, with every team playing one another, there aren't the same gaps and unbalanced schedule-laden mirages in this league that you get with some others.

2017 Pac-12 Football Predictions with Betting Odds and Expert Analysis
by Robert Ferringo - 8/29/2017

Perpetually underrated, the Pac-12 enters the season with a pair of national title contenders (USC, Washington), a proven powerhouse that is a sleeper threat to make the College Football Playoffs (Stanford), and a load of potential spoilers that have the talent and coaching to make a surprise run (Oregon, Washington State, UCLA). I feel that the Pac-12 North is the best division in college football (edging out the ACC Atlantic) and I think this league will have one of the most competitive and entertaining conference races in the nation.

2017 Big Ten Football Predictions with Betting Odds and Expert Analysis
by Robert Ferringo - 8/28/2017

Here's how good the Big Ten was last year: the team that represented them in the College Football Playoff didn't even win their division. Ohio State lost a tiebreaker to Penn State in the Big Ten East and watched the Nittany Lions use an amazing comeback to take down No. 6 Wisconsin in the league championship game. And when the dust settled on the season, the Big Ten finished with four teams in the final Top 10 rankings, more than any league in the country.

2017 SEC Football Predictions with Betting Odds and Expert Analysis
by Robert Ferringo - 8/25/2017

The best and worst thing that ever happened to the SEC was their outstanding run from 2008-2012, in which they won five straight National Championships. That period helped establish the false media narrative (fake news!) that the SEC was some otherworldly football conference playing at a level that was beyond the realm of normal men.