Back in the 60s, the 1860s that is, there was a certain leader of men named David Farragut. He was a coach of sorts. OK, technically he was a admiral, but at the time his team was facing a major challenge.
Farragut was attempting to capture the port of Mobile, Ala. during the during the U.S. Civil War, and he had a problem. The Confederacy had placed naval mines (referred to as "torpedoes") and Farragut had sustained several loses as his navy attempted to enter the bay.
But Farragut was a bold man, and despite the adversity, he gave a clear order to his troops: "Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!" His team pressed on and eventually won battle. Farragut's victory allowed the Union to complete a blockade on the Gulf of Mexico, a key step for the Union to defeat the Confederacy.
While the stakes are certainly much lower, Michigan State football head coach Jonathan Smith may find himself in a similar position. After a strong start to the season, the Spartans have lost six of the last seven games. Smith's troops are battered and bruised, and some fans are a bit steamed about the results of the season so far. Some of that frustration has started to boil over on social media over the weekend.
In my opinion, Smith needs to take a bit of advice from Admiral Farragut. Ignore the noise, stay the course, and press on with boldness and confidence. The battle is not yet lost. For his regime, it is still just the beginning.
Up next on the Spartans' schedule are the Purdue Boilermakers, who are coming into town more ice cold than Michigan State. If the Spartans can pick up on win on Friday night, they have the chance to pick up some steam as they head to the post-Thanksgiving season finale against Rutgers.
If the Spartans can win two games in a row, they will be rewarded with the program's first bowl game since 2021. Some fans may have a lukewarm reaction to playing in a lower tier bowl game, possible in Detroit against a MAC opponent, but the extra practices and positive momentum would be a major victory for the Green and White.
Michigan State Prediction
The Michigan State Spartans and Purdue Boilermakers have faced off a total of 68 times since 1918 and the Spartans lead the overall series 36-29-3.
The series was an even, back-and-forth affair up until the 1970s. It has been a series of streaks ever since. The Spartans won seven of eight games in the early and mid 1970s, and the Boilers countered by going 7-0-1 in the next seven games.
Starting in 1985, Michigan State posted a record of 10-1-1 until 1997, when Coach Joe Tiller arrived in West Lafayette and turned around the program's fortunes. Purdue went 7-1 against the Spartans through the 2006 season.
Starting in 2007, the Spartans turned the tide once again, winning eight games in a row before being upset in the most recent meeting in 2021 in West Lafayette. Interestingly, Purdue is 5-3-1 against the spread versus Michigan State in the last nine contents. In general, the Boilermakers have been more competitive than expected against the Spartans consistently over the past decade.
As for this year's contest, Michigan State opened at a 14-point favorite over Purdue which corresponds to an 84% chance that the Spartans will get to five wins. My computer is slightly more confident than that. It predicts a final score of Michigan State 34, Purdue 16.
Purdue is 1-9 so far on the season and is currently on a nine-game losing streak. The Boilermaker's sole win on the season came in Week One over Indiana State, a below average FCS team. Purdue grades out as the third weakest team on the Spartans' schedule, comparable to Florida Atlantic. These factors all point to a comfortable win.
That said, there are a few things in the numbers that make me nervous. First, Michigan State did not exactly blow the doors off Florida Atlantic in Week One, and the performance in the most recent game against Illinois was lackluster, at best. As mentioned above, Purdue has a recent tendency of playing the Spartans closer than expected.
Second, Purdue's has played a very challenging schedule so far (ranked No. 7 nationally in my system) including losses to Notre Dame, Oregon, Ohio State, and Penn State as well as a "jetlag" loss at Oregon State in Week Four.
In Purdue's two Big Ten games so far this year against teams comparable to Michigan State, the Boilermakers lost by a single point at Illinois, and dropped a game in overtime to Northwestern. Does it feel a little hot in here, or is it just me?
While I still think the Spartans come away with a win, I suspect this game will be closer than the 14-point spread.
Big Ten Overview
Table 1 below gives a full summary of the action in the Big Ten in Week 12, including my projected scores, the opening point spread, and the computers' projected point differentials. Note that all rankings referenced below are my computer system's rankings and not any of the national polls.
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| Table 1: Summary of Big Ten action in Week 13, including my algorithm's projected scores. The teams shaded in green are projected to cover by my computer. The teams shaded red are projected to cover by the FPI. |
As the Big Ten race reaches the final stages, there are still four teams in play for the two spots in the Big Ten Championship Game. No. 8 Oregon is idle this week, but contrary to my analysis earlier in the week the Ducks have claimed one of the two spots in the Big Ten Championship game. I was interpreting one of the tiebreaker rules incorrectly, which frankly still has me a bit steamed.
No. 1 Ohio State, No. 6 Penn State, and No. 10 Indiana are all still alive to claim the second slot in Indianapolis. The winner of this weekend's contest between Indiana and Ohio State (-11.5) is very likely to fill that slot.
Among other things, the Nittany Lions need Ohio State to lose twice in order to reach the Big Ten Championship Game. But Penn State will also need to stay the course and run the the table, including a road game this week at Minnesota (+12).
All four teams have a solid chance to make the playoffs, but the Hoosiers could get into bubble trouble if Ohio State blows them out on Saturday.
The remaining conference games mostly impact the overall Big Ten bowl landscape. In addition to the four playoff contenders listed above, No. 40 Illinois, No. 14 Iowa, No. 21 Minnesota, and No. 52 Rutgers have all reached the six-win threshold. Idle No. 38Washington has also qualified and will play in a legacy Pac-12 bowl this year.
Michigan is likely to earn a bowl bid with a win over Northwestern (+13). If the Wildcats prevail, however, the Wolverines will most likely be home for the holidays, while Northwestern would still have a shot at the post season.
Wisconsin travels to Nebraska (-2.5) and the winner will get to six wins. Illinois also visits Rutgers (-1.5) and both teams are simply looking to pad their bowl resumes. My computer likes the two road teams in an upset.
Maryland is on the brink of bowl game elimination. The Terrapins will need a home upset win over Iowa (-2.5) to keep their bowl hopes alive. Out west, USC is looking to get to six wins while at the same time eliminating rival UCLA (+5.5) from the post season.
Regarding the legacy Big Ten bowl games, here is my current projection:
Top four teams: Playoffs
Cheez-It Citrus Bowl vs SEC: Illinois (9-3)
ReliaQuest Bowl vs SEC: Iowa (8-4)
Duke's Mayo Bowl vs ACC: Wisconsin (7-5)
Music City Bowl vs SEC: Michigan (6-6)
Pinstripe Bowl vs ACC: Michigan State (6-6)
Guaranteed Rate Bowl vs Big 12: Minnesota (6-6)
GameAbove Sports Bowl vs MAC: Rutgers (6-6)
In this scenario Nebraska finishes at 5-7 and misses the cut. I have Michigan State projected to the Pinstripe Bowl mostly because Minnesota and Rutgers played there in 2022 and 2023. While it might make some Spartan fans' blood boil, Michigan seems likely to get the best bowl out of the 6-6 teams, if they qualify.
That said, actual bowl selection politics are both messy and unpredictable. I've gotten burned a few times when trying to make bowl predictions using actual logic.
Other Notable National Action
Now let's move to a discussion of the rest of the college football landscape. Table 2 below summarizes the notable action in the rest of the nation in Week 13. The table highlights the action for the primary contenders in each remaining power conferences as well as the Group of Five contenders for the likely final automatic bid to the playoffs.
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There are still practically four teams alive in the simmering SEC race, with No. 3 Texas and No. 2 Alabama as the most likely SEC Championship Game participants. The Longhorns and Crimson Tide are double digit favorites versus No. 39 Kentucky (+19.5) and at No. 46 Oklahoma (+13) respectively.
No. 5 Georgia will need a little help to reach the conference title game, but the Bulldogs should sail to victory this week against No. 128 UMass (+41.5).
The most competitive SEC game of impact for the week is No. 17 Texas A&M at No. 49 Auburn (+2.5). The Aggies are in a weak tiebreaker position and need to win out to have any chance to play for the SEC crown.
The Big 12 race reached a boil last weekend as four teams now have at least a 30% chance to reach the Big 12 Championship Game. All four contenders face tough challenges this weekend. Most notably two of those teams face off as No. 27 BYU is a slight underdog on the road at No. 31 Arizona State (-3).
New conference favorite, No. 18 Colorado, faces a tough challenge at No. 37 Kansas (+2) while No. 12 Iowa State travels to No. 65 Utah (+5).
Colorado and BYU remain on the inside track as they both have a full game lead in the standings. However, Iowa State and Arizona State have slightly better strengths of schedules, which could make tiebreakers interesting in the case of a multi-team tie.
The ACC race is down to just three teams with No. 15 Miami and No. 35 SMU with a clear advantage over No. 29 Clemson. The Tigers face FCS-opponent The Citadel while the Hurricanes and Mustangs are both double-digit favorites.
Miami (-23.5) is a big favorite over No. 87 Wake Forest while SMU (-10) faces a bigger challenge on the road at Virginia.
In Group of Five action, No. 44 Boise State is steaming right along on a path to the Mountain West Championship Game, including this week's contest at Wyoming (+23.5). In the Bronco win out, they have a great shot to make the playoffs.
However, the biggest Group of Five game of the week could be No. 19 Army's clash with No. 7 Notre Dame in Yankee Stadium. The Fighting Irish are hoping to run the table and claim a spot in the playoffs, but an upset win by the Black Knights could vault Army ahead of Boise State in the Group of Five pecking order.
That said, even if Army upsets Notre Dame, the Black Knights will need to get past idle No. 13 Tulane in the American Athletic Conference Title Game in order to secure a playoff bid.
Picks of the Week
The sections above highlighted several potential upsets and recommended picks against the spread. Figure 1 below gives an overview summary of all my computer's projections for the week in comparison to the opening Vegas spread. The same data generated by EPSN's Football Power Index is shown in Figure 2.
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| Figure 1: Comparison of the projected final margins of victory based on my algorithm to the opening Vegas lines for Week 13. |
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A brief explanation of how to read these figures can be found in Week One's Bad Betting Advice column. This week's upset picks (the games appearing to the left of the vertical red lines in both figures) are summarized below in Table 3.
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| Table 3: Summary of upset picks for Week 13. |
The computers combine for 10 total upsets this week, most of which involve Group of Five teams. As mentioned above, there are two Big Ten games on the list: Wisconsin over Nebraska and Illinois over Rutgers.
There are some indications that it could be a wild weekend. My simulation of the week's games suggests that a total of 17.1 plus-or-minus 3.4 upsets is most likely. This is both the highest number and high ratio of expected upsets year to date.
The games shown above in Figures 1 and 2 which fall outside of either set of dashed diagonal lines make up the set of suggested bets against the spread. Those selections are summarized below in Table 4.
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| Table 4: Picks against the opening spread for Week 13. The picks are listed in order of confidence score. |
Once again, the computers only came up with one recommended pick against the spread. This week that pick comes from my analysis of the FPI data which likes Fresno State to cover the 2-point spread as the underdog versus Colorado State.
Finally, Table 5 below summarizes my computer's recommended point total bets for the week.
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| Table 5: Recommended total points bets (over/under) for Week 13. Note the picks labeled as "locks" are at a higher level of confidence. |
My computer recommends eight point bets, five of which qualify as the ironically named "locks." Only two of the eight involve Power Four teams: Iowa and Maryland to combine for over 46.5 points and Central Florida and West Virginia to combine for less than 64.5 points.
Note that two of the games in Table 5 were completed on Tuesday night. My computer correctly picked Akron and Kent State with the over, but incorrectly went with the over for Western Michigan and Central Michigan.
That is all the advice I have for you this week. Hopefully you enjoyed my steaming hot takes, historical references, and attempts to boil down the data into a meaningful broth of college football understanding. Check back early next week in Against All Odds to see how the picks above performed.
Social Media Copy
While some fans are blowing off steam about Michigan State's performance so far this year, the prudent choice is to stay the course. The battle is just beginning. Dr. Green & White (@paulfanson) suggests patience in addition to his weekly financial advice.
The last eight weeks of Spartan football have been tough, but there is still time to claim some victories before the season comes to a close. It all boils down to the final two weeks. Check out more of my steaming hot takes in this week's edition of Bad Betting Advice.
I think that it is natural for some Spartan fans to be frustrated by the current football season, but there are some corners of the fanbase who are getting out of hand. A few more vocal critics have been calling for the heads of both Coach Smith and even Alan Haller.
To put it simply, I think that this criticism is shortsighted and, frankly, stupid. I expect this kind of nonsense from Wolverine fans. Spartans fans should know better. Some folks need to simmer down
The fact is that Michigan State's current record is exactly what the math said it was going to be when I performed my schedule analysis back in August. Considering the fact that Smith has had to deal with a rash of injuries in the secondary and on the offensive line, and one could make the argument that this team is still overachieving.
So the opening and theme of this week's edition of Bad Betting Advice is half history lesson and half pep talk. There is no reason to freak out. The post season and a winning season overall is still on the table. They just need to hunker down and fight for the next two weeks.
In other news, I got a little annoyed on Tuesday when word started to circulate that Oregon had already clinched a spot in the Big Ten Championship Game. My math said otherwise and I went down a Twitter and math rabbit hole trying to figure out what was going on.
To make a long story short, I was misinterpreting a line in the Big Ten tiebreaker procedure about what to do in a three- or more way tie for first place once the No. 1 seed has been identified. The result is that my new and improved algorithm to calculate conference tiebreakers is not quite right.
I spent a lot of time on this a few weekends ago and I thought I had cracked a longstanding puzzle. Now I have to fix it again, which is just plain annoying. Grrrr.
Anyway, please enjoy this week's edition of Bad Betting Advice
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