Hook Em.

It’s real this time, folks. After nearly two decades of false hope, Texas is actually back. Quinn Ewers and Sark really just went to Tuscaloosa and beat Nick Saban in a relatively convincing fashion. Not that the game was a blowout, but Texas looked the better team for all four quarters and required no flukes to take down Alabama at home, something not many teams in college football have been able to say in the last 15 years.

My two big takeaways from the game are:

  1. Quinn Ewers and Texas are for real. Ewers hit some big-time throws that evaded him at times last season, which stopped the Horns from reaching new heights. The Big 12 looks pretty bad outside of Texas with TCU, Baylor, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State all looking below par. Oklahoma looks like the only real competition for Texas in conference play but Texas should still be favored by a decent amount in that game. That leaves the path clear for Texas to make it to the CFP if they can stay focused. Amazing.
  2. Jalen Milroe is who we thought he was. I was adamant in my write-up for this game last week that people were overreacting to Milroe’s performance in Week One. He is obviously. a freak athlete so against a defense of athletes that don’t really stack up to him, he could run wild and make plays. Texas’ defense, however, kept him in check and he could not make big-time throws when needed. This B1G West is still very much up for grabs in my opinion. Texas A&M looked bad against Miami but I still think Alabama, LSU and even OLE MISS are still in contention to win this division.

Elsewhere in the CFB world, Coach Prime bodied me again. But honestly, holy shit is Nebraska’s offense bad. Jeff Sims looked horrible and Marcus Satterfield is proving that you never need to achieve any tangible success in the college football world to keep getting jobs as long as you have good connections. As much as I look like an idiot and my Colorado win total under is very much in bad shape, I still think against the teams at the top of the conference Colorado’s defense will get torn to shreds. I will be holding off against Colorado State next week and honestly hope Colorado beats them by 50 because then the two weeks after that they play Oregon and USC and I want the best possible numbers to back those teams. Both of those offenses might put up 60 points so that should be exciting to watch unfold.

Outside of Texas (which was only a 7.5-point spread) there were no massive upsets in the top-25 this week. Many teams will now have a cupcake Week 3 game before we really get into the thick of conference play, so there could be a few days of calm in the CFB world.

When it came to my betting performance, it was the exact opposite of Week One. Week One I had some really good reads but my three biggest bets of the weekend all lost, causing me to go down a few units despite a decent record. This week, I said I wanted to trim down my card and focus on two big plays- Texas and the Ole Miss/JMU MLP. Texas +7.5 hit for 4u and 1u on the ML got home for safe measure. Ole Miss ended up pulling away to win in convincing fashion over Tulane, whereas it took a massive 4th quarter comeback for JMU to pull off the 1-point win.

Regardless, the two big plays of the weekend hit, and despite a losing record on the card, we got ourselves just into the green overall on the season.

Week Two: 6-8 +3.38u

CFB YTD: 23-24 +0.08u

There is obviously way more work to do but it is still so early in the season. If we keep building positive weeks like this one, it should be another great year.