Sometimes you gotta go back… to actually move forward.

There is no other way to put it… I got smoked last weekend. The final tally finished on 6-9-2 (-5.95u). Some losses were brutal. Duke +14 losing because of the Leonard injury and an all-time choke job, the Clemson debacle that should have been a push worst-case, and the Penn State penalty that called back the defensive TD that changed that whole game. A lot went wrong that could have gone the other way but some calls were straight-up awful.

That brings our CFB YTD total to 66-69-6 -8.03u.

While we’re here, here is the NFL YTD as well for housekeeping purposes: NFL YTD: 37-28-1 +6.46u so hopefully we keep chugging there.

I have not been down that big at this point in the season in at least three years. It’s a total bummer for me as I am betting my own money on all of these games, but it’s even harder when you know that there are people out there putting their own money on things based on your opinion. It is a weight that can really get to you at times and is hard to understand until you’ve been in that position. Sometimes that feeling causes you to react differently to losing runs than if you were just an anonymous person where only yourself, your bookie, and God know your losing picks.

For me, I had been on a bit of a cold run heading into this weekend but had been stemming the losses pretty well. Last week, I decided I needed a bounceback in a big way so I went incredibly hard during the week. I listened to a bunch of different podcasts with CFB “experts,” I dove deep into every box score I could get my hands on and completely flooded my brain with information. Then we ended up with the results that we got. This week, something needed to change.

It was time to get back to basics. I took Monday and Tuesday completely off. I didn’t watch the MNF game, I didn’t handicap anything at all, I didn’t look through last week’s results, nothin’. I simply did my real job, walked my dog, played some tennis, ate some good food and relaxed for the first time in a long time. Then on Wednesday, I did some housekeeping from last week’s games to try to honestly analyze where I went wrong and start to look through this weekend’s games. It wasn’t until Thursday that I went into the lab and just totally focused my brain on the board and didn’t leave the room until I had my card for the weekend.

I decided to go all with 1u plays and only bet the games that I really liked on first instinct. There will be no late adds this week. This is the card. This is the week that we get some positive momentum and start chipping away at that deficit. Not by getting cute with some 5u play or some UMass +41 bullshit. This is good, clean, hard-nosed football. We’re going to shove it down the bookmakers throats, take our profit and move on to next week and do it again.

The Card

Kansas +10 vs. Oklahoma

Maryland -13.5 @ Northwestern

UCF/Oregon MLP (-109)

UGA/Florida o47

Washington TT o43.5

Kentucky +3.5 vs. Tennessee

Ohio State/Wisconsin u45.5

Arizona +3.5 vs. Oregon State