I think it's an overall good strategy, but with a few caveats. First, there are always a few top 25 teams that really are dominant- think Florida St. last year, Oregon, Alabama the last few years, etc. If you blindly bet against those type of teams, you'll get burned. What I try to look for is top 25 teams that have overinflated spreads or have a long standing reputation as a program, but are overrated now. Nebraska was a good example the last few years. They supposedly could dominate teams with their run game, home crowd and big, strong linemen. But they are not recruiting like they used to and their time has come and gone. Only since last year had the spreads adjusted.
I noticed one year that the ranked teams did very badly ATS early in year.... but then testing and observation has shown that some years the ranked teams have done very well.
UCLA is interesting... I like the idea of fading top 25 "trendy" teams. teams say starting the year at much higher ranking than recent years (start vs start though. NOT start vs. end).............. mich state would be recent team. but they did well. they had good defense though (real UNDER team) but of course if you start adjusting for good O vs. good D then I'm probably just data mining...
anyway, I like the idea of fading darling teams....... not really sure how UCLA looked this year with returning starters other than hundley coming back which was huge but only one guy.
UCLA is interesting... I like the idea of fading top 25 "trendy" teams. teams say starting the year at much higher ranking than recent years (start vs start though. NOT start vs. end).............. mich state would be recent team. but they did well. they had good defense though (real UNDER team) but of course if you start adjusting for good O vs. good D then I'm probably just data mining...
anyway, I like the idea of fading darling teams....... not really sure how UCLA looked this year with returning starters other than hundley coming back which was huge but only one guy.
