Protect Your Unit Week 5 Picks Thread

(DISCLAIMER: This contest is for entertainment purposes only. No actual money is being wagered.)

We have another awkward line situation this week. A lot of you, especially our regular parlay players, jumped on an early line of Pittsburgh being favored at home against Marshall by a mere 1 point. This line seemed pretty off, and some of you even asked me if it would be honored. It will, and I will now explain why.

In a case where a line looks incorrect, I do an investigation to see how it got into the state-of-the-art supercomputer that runs the PYU website. The main thing is, was this ever a legit line offered by a real sports book? To determine this, I look at my line sources, and I look at the line history pages available at vegasinsider.com. Basically, if there’s any history of the line being offered by a real sportsbook, I will honor it.

In the case of Marshall-Pitt, Vegas Insider says this:

As you can see, three different books had PITT -1 at some point. One of them had it as late as 5 PM on Tuesday. Is this a real line? Could you have logged into one of those sites and make that bet, provided it was legal to do so in your location? Probably not. If Pitt -1 was a real offering, it would have moved gradually, instead of jumping from -1 to -16 instantly as it did. To see an example of how such a movement would look, check the history for Bowling Green-Eastern Michigan . It starts at BGSU -10, then moves to -3 in a rapid but orderly fashion. (We also talk about BGSU-EMU in the GAMBOLLLLLL podcast. Seriously. We do.)

This was probably a placeholder line of some sort that worked its way through to the various websites that compile and republish lines. In the podcast, Jamie and Collin said they noticed other such lines, such as Ohio State -1 over Rutgers, which certainly can’t be right.

However, that puts me, as the PYU game manager, in a tough spot. Do I throw out lines that are “obviously wrong”, thus requiring me to make judgment calls on what the line “should” be?

To deal with this, I have made two philosophical decisions for how to handle such situations going forward:

• I don’t want to judge what lines “should” be. If a line is reported by any sports book, on any of the compilation websites I use to compile the PYU lines, and is submitted to the PYU game engine, it will be considered a valid offering. In other words, if I can find proof the line existed at a web site that reports lines and their history - even if it’s an obvious data error on their end - I will let it play. Lines will only be voided if they were an error on my part.

But more importantly:

• Jumping on bad lines is the behavior we want to reward.

In thinking about this problem, it occurred to me that we were punishing good plays. I don’t mind doing this in a case where I’ve obviously screwed up, like when I had Tulane getting 99 points against FAU. (They covered.) But I confirmed that Pitt -1 was in the source data, and wasn’t a mistake on my part. My system correctly identified it as the best available line. So I didn’t feel right vetoing it.

And I have good news for dsidwell31, who had his Virginia Tech +425 over East Carolina bet voided last week. After looking more closely at the line history data, I have found two instances where a positive money line was offered for VT. My system must have retrieved the line at that time. This was certainly a data error on their end, but it was reported at a live odds site and got into my system, so it counts.

I have thus reversed my decision from last week, and allowed this wager to stand. The bet of 100 units won 425. I paid him his fake money, and adjusted his weekly limit accordingly.

There’s one other thing I want to point out here: when erroneous lines get into the system, they are equally available to everyone. I only update lines once a day, in part because I want to give everyone a reasonable amount of time to play each set of lines. Any of you could have jumped on Pitt -1 or Virginia Tech +425. So I don’t feel that the situation gives anyone an unfair advantage.

Having said all that, now watch Pitt lose to Marshall. This being Pitt, it’s certainly possible.

On to this week’s action:

The parlays are also flying hot and heavy:

• BullsOnParade, $200, Pitt -1 over Marshall, Miami -6.5 over Georgia Tech
• bullmartin, $100, Navy +7.5 over Air Force, Arizona State +8 over Southern California
• mmmmsnouts, $50, USF-Cincinnati over 59.5; USF -5.5 over Cincinnati
• Defdans, $40, USF-Cincinnati over 60.5; Toledo-BYU over 52.5; Michigan State -6.5 over Indiana
• ULhothot, $14.46, Pitt -1 over Marshall; Wisconsin +10.5 over Michigan; Florida -9.5 over Vanderbilt

As always, use the comments to discuss your picks, lobby for Spite Bet or Degenerate Bet of the Week awards, and comment on the week’s action in general.