**NOTE** We do not endorse illegal or irresponsible behavior. We are just here to crack one liners and yell, cuss, and scream speak our minds. We haven't tried one of these columns yet, which is surprising because it involves actual handicapping and a statistical analysis (two things we love at STS). Please give us feedback on this kind of article, as I would like to put a couple of these together a year but want to know how they'd be better. Now on to the goodie:
We all know that Clemson is a slight (3-4 point) favorite with a 58-61 O/U line hosting Auburn this weekend. What does that mean for the gambling better informed fans? We'll take a look at a couple items to beef up your wallet make your friends respect your knowledge of the game and the spread. All of the figures and data I'll discuss today came from a very easy to use and informative site: www.pickshark.com
Below we have the last three games (sorry, we couldn't scrounge up the spread from the early '70's). Against the Barners, Clemson is 0-3 straight up but has covered in 2 of the 3 contests. You'll notice that our Tigers were dogs in both games they covered. You probably also noticed that the under bet won in both games shown in the illustration below.
The next item I wanted to see was how Clemson performed at home. We sampled the last 10 Clemson home games and here is what we found: The Clemson/PC game last season was off the board, so our sample size shrunk to 9. In those nine games Clemson was 6-3 straight up and 3-6 against the spread. Ouch!! Five of the nine games were under for the Tigers. Not much confidence with Clemson and an apparent coin flip on the O/U.
Well, what about the last ten games overall? Clemson is 6-4 straight up and 5-5 against the spread. Another coin toss. The Tigers' games, though have hit the under in 70% of those contests though the last three were overs.
Clemson in the last 10 games as a favorite is 8-2 straight up. You would expect a team to do such, so that is no big news. Again, though, CU is a coin flip here against the spread. The Tigers, though, are again 70% under in these games. I'll note that the only three overs in this selection were the final three games.
The final chart we'll look at is Clemson's last 10 vs. SEC opponents. Clemson is a dismal 3-7 straight up and 3-7 against the spread. Again, the O/U shows 7 out of 10 times Clemson hit the under.
The repeating theme here is that Clemson is, at best, a coin flip against the spread. Historically, they have covered 2 of the last three against AU but only covered 3 of 10 in their last 10 home games and their last 10 SEC games. Clemson does show a tendency to hit the under. At 60, though many of the metrics (last 10 games, last 10 games as a favorite, and last 10 games at home) each show Clemson hitting the over in each of the final three games played.
Much like the real football commentary, I have definite trouble identifying a reliable trend and certainly think anything could happen tomorrow. Hopefully the straight up record as a favorite (80% over the past 10 games) will hold up against Auburn.