Against All Odds, 2025 Week 12: Plans
"And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time."
Back in 2005, the indie rock group Death Cab For Cutie penned a lyric in their song "What Sarah Said," that has stuck with me over the years. The song opens with the line:
"And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time."
Going into the 2025 college football season, Michigan State fans were optimistic about the future. There was the belief that head Coach Jonathan Smith had a plan to rebuild the Spartan program. There was the hope that Year Two under the new staff would show significant improvement on the field. Many Spartan fans had plans to book a trip to a bowl game for the first time since the Peach Bowl in 2021.
But after last weekend's loss to Penn State, the Spartans have been eliminated from bowl contention. Michigan State has clinched a fourth consecutive losing season in East Lansing for the first time since the early 1980s. This particular prayer to father time appears to have gone unanswered.
The frustration from the fanbase over the current seven-game losing streak is significant. Some feel like nervous pacers in the hospital waiting room, praying for a miraculous recovery for a football program that appears to be on its deathbed. Other fans simply want to burn the house down and start over again.
As the end of the season looms, a difficult decision is on the horizon for Michigan State athletic director J Batt. The internal debate in his head circles around the concept of whether the glass is still half empty or half full. Are there roads still left in the shoes of the current Spartan staff? Or is sticking to the plan made by the previous athletic director simply telling Spartans fans to follow him into the dark?
The fate of the Jonathan Smith tenure in East Lansing will likely come down to Batt, and it is unclear which direction, if any, he is currently leaning. No matter what happens over the next two weeks and beyond, Batt needs to have a plan and he needs to execute it.
If Batt intends to keep Smith for another year, they need to work together on a plan to bolster the team in the offseason through the portal and possibly through some other changes to the staff.
If Batt plans to let Smith and company go at the end of the season or before, he needs to have already been working the back channels to identify and secure Smith's replacement. That plan needs to already be in motion, at least partially.
The worst case scenario would be for Smith to be fired with no clear candidates in mind to replace him. As the old saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail. A coaching search is not simple matter. Remember that Jonathan Smith was Michigan State's Plan A candidate two years ago.
I believe that Batt, armed with far more information than any member of the fanbase, will ultimately make the "correct" decision, whatever decision that happens to be. But if he doesn't, I would not plan on a Spartan turn around happening any time soon.
Week 12 Betting Results
Let's take a look at the performance of last week's picks from my Bad Betting Advice article, starting with the overview summary shown below in Figure 1. More information about how to read this figure can be found in the Week One edition of Against All Odds.
Figure 1: Results of Week 12 showing the actual point differentials relative to the opening spread.
A total of 14 teams overachieved by beating the spread by more than 14 points. This list includes James Madison, Texas Tech, Washington, Miami, BYU, Utah, Georgia, and Missouri. Texas A&M was the only team that won but failed to cover the spread by 14 points or more.
A total of 13 teams were upset in Week 11, which just under the value of 14.6 that I predicted last week. Table 1 below summarizes those upsets and compares them to the picks made last week.
Table 1: Upsets in Week 12 based on the opening Vegas line compared to the upset projections from last week.
Based on the opening spread, the biggest upset of the week was Navy over South Florida (-10). Other impactful upsets on the board were Oklahoma over Alabama (-7.5), Arizona over Cincinnati (-6.5), Virginia over Duke (-6), and Clemson over Louisville (-3).
My algorithm went 3-2 (60%) for upsets on the week which brings the year to-date-performance to 37-48 (43.5%). ESPN's Football Power Index made only one pick this week and it was wrong. This makes the FPI's year-to-date record 17-29 (37%).
Table 2 below gives the results of the computers' picks against the opening spread.
Table 2: Results of the highlighted picks against the spread for Week 12.
There was just a single recommended pick on the board in Week 12 and my algorithm got it right. This brings the year-to-date performance to 31-29 (52%). The FPI held steady with a year-to-date tally of 20-16 (56%).
Considering all 58 games this weekend, my computer went 37-21 (64%) against the opening spread, bringing the year-to-date total to 315-310 (50.4%). The FPI also had a good week. It went 32-26 (55%) which brings the year-to-date performance to 298-237 (48%).
Table 3 below gives the results of the point total bets for Week 12.
Table 3: Results of the recommended point total bets ("over/under") for Week 12.
My computer missed on both lock picks but got the sole other picks correct.
As a result the year-to-date performance for the locks is now at 23-27 (46%). The overall performance for my set of recommended point-total bets is now to 77-85 (47.5%). It is generally not a good plan to count on my point total picks so far this year.
Updated Big Ten Odds and Expected Wins
Following the results of Week 12, I have re-run the full season Monte Carlo simulation using the updated power rankings, including the current uncertainty in those rankings, to update the season odds for each team.
Table 4 below gives the update for the Big Ten conference and Table 5 shows the updated Big Ten win distribution matrix.
Note that all the rankings listed in the table and mentioned below refer to my computer's power rankings and not any of the national polls.
