Beyond the Bets

What were the odds of the San Antonio Spurs blowing that kind of lead so late in Game 6? Were they truly 100-to-1 as some estimated?

Fortunately, advanced stats can help us out.

When trying to put together power ratings for college football teams, you’ve got to start somewhere. The most basic starting point is to pool together the rankings from the four major preview magazines.

This year, Alabama is the unanimous No. 1 team after being awarded the top spot by every publication. Ohio State (ranked 2nd three times), Oregon, Stanford and Georgia round out the top 5.

If you haven’t heard that the Miami Heat are 12-0 against the spread since January following a loss, then you’re obviously not following one of the 10,000 people on Twitter who have been tweeting non-stop about it for all of June.

Tonight, in Game 6 of the NBA Finals, the Heat are coming off a loss. They’re also 7-point favorites against the San Antonio Spurs despite trailing 3-2 and being backed into the proverbial corner.

On his ESPN Radio show Tuesday morning, Colin Cowherd offered up his take on the Game 6 point spread.

We previously posted college football odds for a handful of BCS conferences.

But today, 5Dimes released odds (conference and divisional) for all 10 leagues, everything from the American Athletic to the Mountain West.

Continuing today, we’re going conference by conference to give a preview of sorts based on the Golden Nugget’s lines.

In the Big 12, the Kansas State Wildcats will look to repeat as champions in a league where five teams—and possibly as many as six—seem to have a legitimate chance at contending for the title.

The first wave of bettors have made their way through the Golden Nugget sportsbook in Las Vegas, and of the 248 college football lines released last Friday, only 34 of them have moved more than a point.

DonBest.com posted updated point spreads on Monday. Read on to see the biggest moves.

Continuing today, we’re going conference by conference to give a preview of sorts based on the Golden Nugget’s lines.

In the Pac-12, despite losing head coach Chip Kelly to the NFL, Oregon still has speed. Lots of it. And that makes the Ducks double-digit favorites in eight of nine conference matchups and a threat to run the table in the Pac-12.

The Miami Dolphins are the only team besides the New England Patriots to win the AFC East in the past decade, and now they’re becoming a trendy sleeper pick to do so again in 2013.

Should we buy into the belief that Miami can dethrone this New England dynasty? Or, better yet, haven’t we been here before?

Eighty-three different teams have at least one game with a line already and—no shocker here—the SEC has point spreads for all but 12 of its total matchups.

That’s where we come in. Starting today, we’ll go conference by conference to give a preview and projected standings based on the Golden Nugget’s lines. Let’s start with the SEC.

The Golden Nugget Casino decided to double the fun when it posted its annual College Football Games of the Year lines today.

In the past, the Nugget has released point spreads for approximately 100 marquee games, with most of them coming from BCS conferences. This year, the sportsbook released lines for a whopping 248 games—and 83 of 125 FBS teams were represented in all.