Against All Odds, 2025 Week Nine: Inches

Former Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio used to say that football is a game of inches. On the occasion that Dantonio's teams did come short, he would often site a handful of plays or decisions that ultimately sealed him team's fate. This may have been a missed tackle, a failed fourth down conversion, or a poorly timed penalty.

On Saturday, if Michigan State were to have a chance to upset the Michigan Wolverines, it was clear that the Spartans were going to need to find those inches. They were going to need to avoid mistakes and make the plays that mattered when they mattered.

But just minutes into the game, it was clear that the Spartans were not going to find those inches. Play after play after play, Michigan State kept rolling snake eyes, starting with a fumble by quarterback Aidan Chiles that was inches from going out of bounds (or not) before being recovered by the Wolverines.

As the game went on, there were catches that were just out of bounds (or not), spots that were inches short (or not), and Malcolm Bell was offsides by an inch (or not) on a play that resulted in a fumble recovery by the Michigan State defense. Throughout the game there were penalties, both called and uncalled, that could have gone either way. The majority of those seemed to magically go against the guys in Green and White.

The most disappointing part of the loss to the Wolverines is that despite the Spartans' poor play, there were opportunities to get back into the game well into the fourth quarter. Despite what the crew in Ann Arbor wants to believe, the two teams are not miles apart. This is a game that Michigan State could have won, if they just could have found a few more inches.

Sometimes, it just isn't your night. The problem is that it hasn't been the Spartans' night all season, or frankly most of last season... or the two seasons before that. With every double-digit loss, hope fades in the fanbase and Michigan State inches closer and closer to irrelevancy.

In my opinion, luck plays a larger role in sports than many believe. I think that Michigan State has been very unlucky throughout the Jonathan Smith era. But at some point, good teams need to make their own luck. 

As 19th century French science Louis Pasteur almost said, "chance favors the prepared football team." Is a consistent lack of luck is just an excuse for a lack of preparation?

That seems unlikely based on the strong resume that Jonathan Smith brought with him from the west coast. He is a well-respected coach who made lowly Oregon State into a conference contender that could go toe-to-toe and beat their in-state rival.

There is no reason that success should not translate in East Lansing. But it feels like time is starting to run out. One cannot wait forever for luck to turn around.

Week Nine Betting Results

Let's now 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 Nine showing the actual point differentials relative to the opening spread.

A total of 11 teams overachieved by beating the spread by more than 14 points. This list includes Indiana, Utah, Iowa, Texas A&M, San Diego State, and Cincinnati. The only team to fail to cover the spread by 14 points, yet win, was Oregon.

A total of 11 teams were upset in Week Nine, which is just over one standard deviation below the expected value of 14.5. Table 1 below summarizes those upsets and compares them to the picks made last week.

Table 1: Upsets in Week Nine based on the opening Vegas line compared to the upset projections from last week.

The biggest upsets of the week were all in the Group of Five. Specifically, Rice upset UConn (-10.5), Akron upset Buffalo (-10.5), and Kent State upset Bowling Green (-9.5). Other notable upsets include Houston over Arizona State (-7.5), Ole Miss over Oklahoma (-4), Memphis over South Florida (-3.5), and BYU over Iowa State (-2).

My algorithm went 4-5 (44%) which brings the year to-date-performance to 30-40 (43%). ESPN's FPI went 1-1 (50%) bringing the year-to-date performance up to 17-26 (39.5%), which is still a few feet below expectations.

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 Nine.

My algorithm went just 2-3 (40%) on the recommended bets, bringing the year-to-date performance to 27-25 (52%). My analysis of the FPI data resulted in no recommended picks against the spread leaving the year-to-date tally at 20-15 (57%).

Considering all 53 games this weekend, my computer went 32-21 (60%) against the opening spread, bringing the year-to-date total to 231-233 (49.8%). The FPI was several yards behind, going 23-30 (43%) against the spread. This brings the year-to-date performance down to 218-246 (47%).

Table 3 below gives the results of the point total bets for Week Nine.

Table 3: Results of the recommended point total bets ("over/under") for Week Nine.

The point total bets had a great week on small volume. The lock picks went 2-0 (100%) which brings the year-to-date performance to 17-18 (49%). The full set of recommended bets went 3-1 (75%) this weekend, bringing the overall performance for the year to 70-76 (48%). 

Overall, this performance isn't great, but it is inching back towards .500.

Updated Big Ten Odds and Expected Wins

Following the results of Week Nine, 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.