BYU fans are delusional.

[brother_h8]

Most of them anyways but not all of them.. BYU will be lucky to score 10 pts against Oklahoma. They will give up 42.

[Indy Coug]

More than half of Cougarboard has predicted a loss to Oklahoma.

http://www.cougarboard.com/predictio...38&sort=spread

[beefytee]

Care to share your reasoning?

Last year they held Chattanooga and TCU to 10 points or less.

So either you are saying that TCU's offense from last year is better than BYU's this year or a few other asumptions about adjustments to OU's defense.

Washington, Cincinnati and Baylor all scored more than 10 points on them.

I haven't seen anyone reason that the cougars are going to hold the sooners to a respectable score.

Sure it is possible that OU holds BYU to 10 points or less, but I wouldn't consider BYU lucky if they score more.

[Babs]

I'm expecting BYU to score two or three touchdowns. At the rate things are going (vis à vis BYU injuries and such), the Sooners will score seven or eight.

[pelagius]

The line last time I checked was a spread of 21 with an over/under of 68. A little solving and that gets you,

BYU: 23.5
OU: 44.5

The betting line is, of course, not perfectly efficient but it is efficient enough to confirm that someone who thinks BYU will score about 3 touchdowns isn't delusional.

[Babs]

The line last time I checked was a spread of 21 with an over/under of 68. A little solving and that gets you,

BYU: 23.5
OU: 44.5

The betting line is, of course, not perfectly efficient but it is efficient enough to confirm that someone who thinks BYU will score about 3 touchdowns isn't delusional.

Right. BTW, Sooners outscored the "over" by more than two touchdowns per game last year.

[Solon]

The line last time I checked was a spread of 21 with an over/under of 68. A little solving and that gets you,

BYU: 23.5
OU: 44.5

The betting line is, of course, not perfectly efficient but it is efficient enough to confirm that someone who thinks BYU will score about 3 touchdowns isn't delusional.

Defenses are usually ahead of offenses in the early part of the season, but I doubt that applies to the Big 12 (of late) or the byu. I expect the BYU to put up some big numbers, including some points, especially if they're down big in the 4th.

[Indy Coug]

The line last time I checked was a spread of 21 with an over/under of 68. A little solving and that gets you,

BYU: 23.5
OU: 44.5

The betting line is, of course, not perfectly efficient but it is efficient enough to confirm that someone who thinks BYU will score about 3 touchdowns isn't delusional.

The over/under has dropped two points. Good news about the BYU CBs!

[SeattleUte]

Most of them anyways but not all of them.. BYU will be lucky to score 10 pts against Oklahoma. They will give up 42.

Here's a tip for you. Your trolling methods are like the guy who walks into a McDonalds and starts shooting. Perhaps you could try a little subtlety and charm.

[pelagius]

Right. BTW, Sooners outscored the "over" by more than two touchdowns per game last year.

Interesting, however if something like that is serially correlated across years Vegas would be in a heap of trouble financially.

[beefytee]

Interesting, however if something like that is serially correlated across years Vegas would be in a heap of trouble financially.

Vegas doesn't need the line to be close.

They just base the lines on the number of picks being even on both sides of the line. That way they can't lose.

[brother_h8]

Here's a tip for you. Your trolling methods are like the guy who walks into a McDonalds and starts shooting. Perhaps you could try a little subtlety and charm.

I don't eat at McDonalds.

[pelagius]

Vegas doesn't need the line to be close.

They just base the lines on the number of picks being even on both sides of the line. That way they can't lose.

While this is intitutive it doesn't address the problem that I was refering to ... If a mechanical strategy like that actually worked then you can be sure that someone would bet that strategy and bet big ... Thus pronounced serial correlation is unlikely in equilibrium (of course, looking back you will always find some teams where this was true but it should not be systematic). In other words you can't equalize the betting money and still have pronounced serial correlation on average.

Also, empirically it isn't true that Vegas equalizes the line (at least there is strong evidence for pro football that this isn't true).

[beefytee]

I don't eat at McDonalds.

Neither do the people that shoot it up.

[brother_h8]

Neither do the people that shoot it up.

The guy on the movie "Falling Down" shot up the ceiling at Whammy Burger and then ate..