We enter the fifth weekend of the college football season with the knowledge that we have had three highly profitable weekends and a disastrous one.
These picks are for entertainment purposes only, of course, but when we’ve been good we’ve been very good – hitting at 66.7 percent or better. The bad, though, was really bad (1-4), and risking and searching for entertainment is a total-sum business.
We talk frequently about trying to find edges that can add to knowledge. Some of our favorite edges include long travel or how a team of 18-to-22-year-olds can handle the emotional roller coaster of the ups and downs of the season.
It’s also prudent to pay attention to the weather. Hurricane Joaquin is going to dump buckets of rain on a number of games. There’s a 100 percent chance in the forecast for most of the East Coast.
What does that mean? It means unpredictable conditions that could mean more fumbles. It also hurts teams that prefer to throw the ball, and it more times than not causes coaches to get even more conservative. Which is saying something, because other than a few outliers a collection of college football coaches falls somewhere between a Fortune 500 board meeting and a Tea Party cookout on the conservative scale.