Protect Your Unit Week 4 Results

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

The Daily Stampede’s Gambollllll Glossary defines fundamentals as “Basic information you should research before betting on a team. Strengths and weaknesses, how they match up with their opponent, injuries, home/away, weather, etc.”

But how are we to make comparisons from such a strange pool of results?

As you no doubt heard, Old Dominion took down #13 Virginia Tech Saturday night. The Hokies lost their quarterback Josh Jackson, but it wasn’t the offense’s fault ODU scored 28 points in the fourth quarter. And had 495 yards passing. From a walk-on quarterback. Ouch. It was so ugly, Virginia Tech later dismissed one of their defensive starters for acting out on Twitter.

ODU’s previous results were all losses, to a terrible Charlotte team; FBS debutante Liberty; and FIU. They were 28-point underdogs, at home, to Virginia Tech. Where on earth did this result come from? And how do you gauge Old Dominion going forward?

And they’re not alone. There are a lot of split-personality teams out there, especially in the AAC:

• Temple lost to Villanova and was blown out by Buffalo (who might actually be good), then thrashed Maryland and beat Tulsa. They play Boston College next.
• Boston College, which was 3-0, and ranked for some reason, was shut down 30-13 by a Purdue team that self-destructed in its first three games and had no defense to speak of.
• Purdue’s next game is Nebraska, a team that doesn’t look very good right now, but would you really bet on Purdue in Memorial Stadium?
• SMU looked awful early, but got a win over Navy. They went for two in the first overtime, motioned an offensive lineman into the slot, didn’t throw to him, scored anyway, and survived several minutes of official reviews.
• Navy hasn’t been good this season, but handed Memphis their only loss.
• After losing to a bad Ole Miss team in the opener, Texas Tech outscored AAC West favorite Houston, and blew out #15 Oklahoma State. Not only that, they demonstrated an actual defense, holding the Pokes to 17 points total and none in the second half. That wrecked a lot of Over bets.
• And as we all know, East Carolina took an embarrassing loss to North Carolina A&T (which is a really good FCS team, to be fair), then blew out North Carolina, had a game cancelled by Hurricane Florence, and played the game we all saw last night. And guess who they play next? Old Dominion. Your guess is as good as mine.
• USF is 4-0, but how good they are is a very open question.

So, did anyone cash in on these odd results? Only e-dogg42 (in a parlay) and undercoverbull (the under for $1) played ODU. More on those results in a minute. mcgies won $81.10 fake dollars on three Texas Tech bets, including a Gamebletron play. Everybody missed on Texas’ “upset” win over TCU. In a non-upset, North Texas destroyed Liberty 47-7. So anyone who stuck with the Mean Green at -12 won anyway.

Big parlay wins continue to be the story of this season. In particular, big parlay wins by BullsOnParade96, who is going all Michael Larson on this competition:

North Texas, Notre Dame, and Central Florida all covered with ease; Utah State went down to the wire. Air Force cut Utah State’s lead from 35-14 to 35-32, but a late 70-yard run by USU’s Gerold Bright provided the points for the cover. That’s a total win of $1,530.35 $1,190.35 in fake money. I suspect that’s the biggest regular-season week ever.

Four other parlays came in:

Next, we need to talk about Floyd’s Money Team Degenerate Bet of the Week. And boy, there are a lot of those. I really can’t pick a winner from among these three players, so we’ll let them all share the award:

• McIntyre2K7 staked a whopping $200 on Connecticut to beat Syracuse outright, at +3000. Enough money to win the whole season if it came in, but UConn sputtered to a 51-21 loss. In the weekly picks thread, he said:

Had this dream that a team with the colors of blue and white beating a team with the colors of orange and white. So I put a bet on UCONN to beat Syracuse. I guess I picked the wrong teams. Didn’t know that blue and white team was ODU and the team wearing orange was VT.

Still, not a half-bad premonition. Just need to dial in those RGB values a little better.

• Undercoverbull made 54 bets of $1 each. That’s one way to meet your weekly requirement. He went 30-23-1 for a total win of $2.80.
• BrianMartin got a whopping +195 on Rutgers, allegedly a Power 5 school, to beat Buffalo. Unfortunately for him, UB crushed Rutgers 42-13.

The Randolph & Mortimer Spite Bet of the week is actually a non-bet. Absolutely no one bet on USF. That almost never happens. There were only five plays on the game total: three on ECU to cover or win outright, and two on the over. Consider it an expression of general disdain towards a football game that deserved it.

Standings:

Week 5 games:

Stanford-Notre Dame and Penn State-Ohio State are the top national games. Stanford absolutely swindled a win against Oregon Saturday night. 4-0 Syracuse heads to Clemson. Tennessee-Georgia is worth mentioning only for Larry Munson’s legendary “hobnail boot” call. Resurgent Texas Tech is at West Virginia. Florida travels to Mississippi State in a matchup of teams that just lost to Kentucky; expect the winner to surge back into the Top 25. Florida State-Louisville will be a test of which program has fallen the hardest. Army-Buffalo is a matchup of two good Group of 5 teams.

In the AAC, only six games. USF has a much-needed off week. Tulsa, Houston, and Connecticut are also off. ODU-ECU and Temple-Boston College were mentioned above. Memphis-Tulane and Cincinnati-UConn are conference games. SMU hosts a very weak Houston Baptist team. Finally, Pittsburgh is at Central Florida.