Big 12: How did they REALLY do?

All-Big 12 All the TimeAs I mentioned a few days ago, the Big 12 was 8-9 versus the line with no line available on five other games. It wasn’t so much that the teams were about 50-50 as it was the size of some of the “misses”. Colorado had two embarrassing losses, Oklahoma, K-State, Oklahoma State and Iowa State also fell far short of what Vegas expected in one of their games. I’m not a gambler and I don’t advocate betting on these contests. In fact, for the most part, I think gambling is problematic for society, but don’t get me started. Nevertheless…

… the line serves a good purpose. It’s amazingly close to how a game should turn out. Very few people can really beat the line. Considering you have to beat it 52.4% of the time to break even (taking out the house’s cut), it’s rare that anyone can succeed in making money at it. You can be sure the 65%-80% claims you read are 100% BS! I might do a post on all that sometime, but for now the reason I bring it up is just to point out that the line is a very good barometer for measuring how a team (or teams) did in any given weekend.

Here is how each of the Big 12 teams did today. Shown is the score, how much they won or lost by, what the line was and how they did against the line. For example, Baylor lost by 8 (22-30). The line was Baylor by 10. Thus, they were 18 points worse than they should have been.

Shown in alphabetical order.

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As you can see, the Big 12 was 5-4 against non conference opponents Saturday. That makes them 13-13 for the season.

Theoretically, teams would be 50-50 regardless of how good they are. So, all the line really tells us is whether they were performing up to expectations whether they are the #1 team in the country or the #100 team in the country. A good example is Texas in their three games. They won 59-20, 41-10 and 34-24, but fell short of the line in all three. It’s problematic to make anything out of hitting or missing the line when you are favored by so many points, but as a rule it’s a pretty good indicator of whether you had a good day or not.

TIDBITS:

-- Colorado is now -16.5, -20 and +17 versus the line in three games. Which Colorado will show up next week.

-- Oklahoma is just as bad (-25 and +27.5 in the two games Vegas had on the board).

-- Nebraska is the only team that is 3-0 versus the line, despite losing to Virginia Tech.

-- Kansas is the only team that is undefeated versus the line and undefeated versus their opponents.

-- Texas and Kansas State are the only teams that are winless against the line.

So, for the season, here is each team’s record vs the line, total margin vs the line and the average margin vs the line.

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