Receipts

The write-up

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We went 2-3 on featured picks in Week 2 and 3-5 on every play in the articles. The tracked picks went 49-34: 45-33 on Saturday’s 78 games and 4-1 on Friday night. All three parlays lost by one leg. Here is all of it.

Ohio State led by twenty and lost, and our ticket still cashed Ohio State led Texas 23-3 going into the fourth quarter. Arch Manning found Ryan Wingo to start the comeback, the Buckeyes missed a 45-yard field goal, and Hollywood Smothers ran it in from a yard out with 25 seconds left. Texas 24, Ohio State 23. It was the largest fourth-quarter comeback ever to beat an AP No. 1, per Sportradar.

We had Ohio State plus one and a half. They lost by one, so it covered by half a point. I will take it, and I will not pretend it was anything other than lucky. The moneyline at +105 lost.

The Michigan flip was wrong I had this game on Michigan early in the week. Then the ratings updated after Week 1, moved almost eight points toward Oklahoma, and I switched sides and laid five and a half. Michigan won 17-10.

The side I abandoned would have covered by twelve and a half. The article even named the exact way it could lose: a young home quarterback playing better than he did a week earlier. Bryce Underwood ran 18 times for 87 yards, scored the first touchdown, and Michigan turned it over zero times. I let one week of games move me across a whole number. That is on me, not the ratings.

What we got right Duke plus six won outright, 31-27 in Champaign, and the +185 moneyline cashed with it. Duke trailed 24-14 in the second quarter and never trailed again once it went up 28-24 in the third. Nate Sheppard scored three times. Illinois got a record day from Collin Dixon, 11 catches for 166 yards and three touchdowns, and it was not enough.

The overview had three outright upsets on its dog side. The best was Oklahoma State plus twenty-two and a half, which beat Oregon 39-31. Appalachian State plus seven and UTSA plus one and a half both won their games too.

What we got wrong Kentucky plus ten and a half led Alabama 17-13 at halftime and looked like the best ticket on the card. Alabama won the second half 32-0 and held Kentucky to 62 yards after the break. Lost by seventeen and a half.

Iowa minus fourteen won 16-13 on a 42-yard field goal with 15 seconds left. That article said two touchdowns in a rivalry game made me uncomfortable and that sitting it out was a fair read. The discomfort was right. The pick was not. Missed by eleven.

On the overview, UNLV minus three and a half lost 44-6 at North Texas, and Kennesaw State minus nine and a half lost by fourteen.

Friday night went 4-1 The Friday card had five games and no staked plays. Louisville, NC State and Virginia all cleared their big numbers, and Missouri won by seventeen at Kansas laying four and a half. The one miss was Rutgers plus three, beaten 28-21 at Boston College.

The parlays All three died one leg short. Good Chance hit Ohio State and Duke, then Iowa missed, so the $696 did not cash. The Confident hit Jacksonville State and UTSA, but UAB won by six instead of ten. The Long Shot hit UCF and Utah State and lost Arkansas and Bowling Green.

The number I have to own I took the 45 overview games where both teams carry a rating and sorted them by how far our numbers disagreed with the board. The ten biggest disagreements went 4-6. The twenty smallest went 11-9. The games where I was most sure the market was wrong did worse than the games where I barely disagreed with it. That is why the parlay I called The Confident was built from the wrong picks, and it is why confidence on this site is now set by what the line actually does during the week, not by how big our gap looks on Monday.

Bottom Line Week 2: 2-3 on featured picks, 3-5 on every play in the articles. Down 1.17 units, about twenty-nine dollars at twenty-five a play. That makes it 8-11-1 on featured picks this season, down a little over three units. The tracked picks went 49-34 across Friday and Saturday, and those are not staked. Every graded play is on the receipts page whether it helps me or not, and the full Saturday card is in the Week 2 overview.