00:00 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
On this week's episode of Circles Off. College football season may be over, but that doesn't mean that we can't apply some valuable insights from this year to next year. Bud Elliott, part of CBS Sports' official college football podcast, will join us today. Talk everything college football related, how he bets it, some angles so that you can bet it. All that and more on this week's Circles Off. So that you can bet it All that and more on this week's Circles Off. Welcome to Circles Off episode number 85, presented by Pinnacle Sports here on the Hammer Betting Network. If you enjoy the content we put out every week, be sure to subscribe to the Circles Off channel. Lots of great stuff here, including 90 Degrees with Kevin Davis every single week as well. Rob Pozzola, johnny from. 

00:48 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
BetStamp number 85. 85, I got two Number one we got to go potentially the greatest tight end of all time, antonio Gates. Oh, of course. 

00:56 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Gates was. He's also like a fantasy hero for me. Gates for so many years, absolute legend. 

01:03 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
One of the best and then second um I mean right now t higgins still in the playoffs right now you forgetting someone who played for the exact same team that wore 85? 

01:12 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
well, that would be obviously the the goal changed his name chad ocho cinco. 

01:17 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I mentioned it last week. We teased it. But yeah, ocho cinco obviously number up number 85. The story behind that, I think for those who don't know it is he put ocho cinco on his jersey for some sort of like spanish heritage spanish heritage game and then they told him he couldn't wear that. So he had it as like a little tape and then they fined him for it and they said you can only wear a name on your jersey. That's whatever your name is. Then the guy went and legally changed his name to chad ochocinco and then proceeded to wear ochocinco on his jersey for the rest of his career. 

01:49 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So I've have uh, I have a direct lines of communication to chad johnson what you're gonna play him in fifa. Yes, so I, uh I held a guinness world record in fifa for about, I'd say, a week and a half, which was the largest margin of victory against an AI opponent Computer opponent. So essentially what happened I was working at the score back in the day and I was the office champ in FIFA. I used to run the gauntlet every night, like starting at five. I'd be at the office to like 7.30, beating down everyone. 

02:21 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
He told his wife they were working him to the grave and they used to go home. 

02:24 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's exactly what happened, by the way. I'd get the message like dinner's almost ready, dinner's going to be on the table, and I'd be like, oh, this job is killing me, whatever. Meanwhile, I'm just like playing PlayStation, but extra five games just just destroying people. And um, there was a like a viral video went out of a guy setting this record right. So somebody at the score sent it to me and they're like take a look at this. Like do you think that you could beat this? I'm watching this guy play. I'm like this, this is like a beginner playing fifa. He this is, I'll smoke this record. His record was like 140 to nothing. I went home. I practiced it one time, took me two hours for the entire practice, got like 250 goals. That wasn't even like it was a shit run too. Anyways, I set the record. 

03:08
It went viral at the time with the score set it as uh, my official first record was 286 to nothing and the previous was 140 yes, oh, you smoked it. 

03:18
I played as I played as juventus against against cork city. I'll I remember the teams. It really doesn't matter which team you play as whichever five-star team, but I wanted to do it with my favorite team. Uh, and then what happened was that went viral and I just started getting all these messages of people talking shit to me on twitter, like this bulgarian kid like was like I'm gonna smoke this. You don't you suck at fifa. And one of the guys talking trash was Chad Johnson, literally messaging me like bro, let's set up a game, I'll smoke you and this and that. So I tried to set up a game. I DM them. I'm like let's get this. I work for a sports media company. He was playing for the Montreal Alouettes at the time. Like next time you guys are in town, you come into studio, we'll set it up. He's like I'm in, I'm in next time montreal comes into town, like the game before. He like pulled his hamstring or something and that was it. It never happened. But we still like very rarely exchange a dm every now and then. 

04:14 - Zack Phillips (Other)
But I love how these people are dming rob saying like you're trash at fifa, bro. This guy beat a computer at 289 and nothing to 86. 

04:21 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, what I think is broken? That that bulgarian kid broke it, but but then I broke it again. So the second record I held was 310 and then did you message him. Bro, you're trash, if you know I didn't because, so I was 310, and then some other person broke it, uh, and got to like 317, and I had never gotten to 317 in any trial, and every single trial took me like two hours. I was just done. 

04:47 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'm like yeah, it's not much this is. 

04:49 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You know that I, I watched that like 317 run. It was flawless. How many? How many misses? Zero, you do not miss. If the ball hits the post and goes out for a corner, or a goalie makes a save, you might as well restart. You're done, you're, you're toast. It's about how quickly you can dispossess the, the opposing player, and the way it works is there's out, there's like a guideline in terms of how you can mod the game. So it's the easiest goalkeepers, everything's easiest setting. It's as easy as it gets. So you learn, like the exact distance that you can shoot from that you're gonna score every time. But like you'll get into like the 70th minute of a game which is taking you an hour and a half by the way of playing. You're playing regular minutes and you're scoring all the time, all the time, all the time. So, um, and then, like the goalie will just make like some random save out of his ass and you're just like I fucking wasted 90 minutes to live my life so one save. 

05:45
It's over cooked, you won't get. You won't get over like 310 with one save. I played up. I played pretty close to a flawless game, some of the stuff that cost me. Like every now and then the ai just does something, like they, you know, they kick the ball, they pass the ball to start after a goal and the guy passes it back like a mile to his defender, which they never do, like they always just pass it to the next closest person, but like one time. So now I have to spend an extra two seconds chasing the defender down and that that like that screwed me. But that does yeah that was. 

06:16
That was a a bad one. Um, also in the nfl, one of my favorite sound clips ever would be michael singletary. Verne, verne, war 85, davis, which is, I think, both of one of our favorite sound clips ever would be Michael Singletary. 

06:25 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Vern Vern War 85. Vernon Davis. 

06:26 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Which is, I think, both of one of our favorite sound clips. 

06:28 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Absolutely Can't do it. Cannot play with him, cannot coach with him, cannot win with him. All right, all right. 

06:36 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
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06:58 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
And actually sign up right now. You need the book. I'm telling you it's so important. I see so many guys wasting money every single game. There was this tweet that went viral last week. 

07:10
Some big bettor at some sports book placed an $880,000 wager to win $800,000 on Ravens plus six and a half. They closed plus eight and a half. He's the only guy in the world who got that shitty number. And then what happens? Fluke, obviously the fumble. Six Bengals win by seven. Guy lost $880,000 if he had just been using Pinnacle and he got a half point better. At the time that he bet that thing it was plus seven across the board. You can't be wasting money like that, and if it's $5 or $1, doesn't matter, because eventually I want everyone here to get into a spot where you can risk a thousand bucks a game because you have that skill. And if you're having bad tendencies risking a dollar or $5, then when you do risk a thousand, you're gonna have those same bad tendencies. Enough, stop wasting money. Sign up today at Pinnacle Sportsbook and other sports book, but first Pinnacle, because for recreational, you're going to find the best number there in about half the games. 

08:06 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So one thing I do on Twitter a lot is people often post their parlay screenshots whenever they place a bet. They want people to tail it whatever. Nine times out of ten when somebody posts these parlay screenshots, if you go put that exact parlay into Pinnacle at the exact same time, it almost always pays more, Almost always. It's just obviously. I bet a pinnacle for a long time. I'm happy to promote sportsbooks that I'm. You know that I use regularly and have used for a long time johnny's right. Like. You're doing yourself a disservice. You just are. If you're in ontario, you're not betting with pinnacle. 

08:41 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
You are doing it wrong I've literally placed a bet on pinnacle. I'm gonna just do some quick math here maybe 2 200 days in a row okay, estimating 2201 days in a row I placed a bet on pinnacle and one and no no that I don't know about that, but 222, yeah for sure I? 

09:03 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I sure I was going to say like what were you doing during COVID, but you were actually like betting on chess and volleyball and ping pong and stuff. 

09:10 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Every day, every day. Yeah, just going head to head with Matthew Trennell. 

09:14 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, yes, you were Matthew Trennell. Matthew Trennell, oh man On the curling markets. 

09:26 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Anyways, if you're not betting at Pinnacle, you're doing it wrong, and if you're not following our next guest, you're also doing it wrong. We now welcome in our guest on Circles Off. This week. He's part of the CBS Sports official college football podcast that's the Cover 3 podcast. Alongside Chip Patterson, Tom Fornelli and Danny Connell, he talks football and recruiting for 247 Sports and he's the co-host of the NOLCast, which actually won the Best College Sports Podcast Award in 2021. I do do my research here on Circles Off. We welcome in Bud Elliott. You can follow him on Twitter at BudElliott3. 

09:57 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Bud how's it going, rob? Good to see you, man. Good to see you guys. Yes. 

10:02 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I haven't seen you in person in a long time. Myself and uh met at a super bowl party in costa rica many, many years ago. That would have been the worst super bowl ever. Right rams patriots, that one yeah, rams patriots yeah that was a horrendous game, but um, we've. 

10:17
We've remained in communication since uh and um. Bud, in my opinion, is one of the foremost authorities on college football in North America the world. I would say uh, so really wanted to get them on here, and I know college football is out of season now, but that doesn't mean we can't gain some valuable insights and learnings into your process and so on and so forth. So, but let's start here and let's get a bit of your personal background, how you got involved in the space, both the sports media industry and the betting side of things as well. 

10:47 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Sure. So I started blogging about college football back in 2007, 2008, maybe, I guess and got picked up by SB Nation when I was still in law school and then, you know, practice for a while as an attorney here in Florida and then it just kind of slowly blew up more and more and SB Nation was like would you like to come on full time? And I was just blessed that I had a good LSAT day, so I didn't come out of law school with any debt, right, and so it allowed me to kind of take a chance on that, you know. And then I started working alongside Bill Connolly at SB Nation, who's done just a ton of awesome analytics, like kind of like the godfather of college ball analytics, basically, in my opinion and so we just pick Bill's brain on gchat every day for like six or seven years and it's like Bill this is applicable to gambling dude like like this definitely can factor into this, and I'd always been, you know, interested. 

11:41
Did the, you know did the online poker thing graduated, graduated college in 2007. So right in that range before Black Monday. So that's kind of how I got into it and I felt like the recruiting side was a really important piece as well, understanding the inputs. If you're betting NFL or NHL, understanding which of these young guys might make an impact and who's a five-star, who's a five star based on upside and who's a five star, who's a five star, maybe, based on ability to contribute right away. You know are are important differentiations you need to be able to draw. I think or at least you know, it's part of my process. So that's kind of how I started into it and just took off from there so the movement from, let's say, poker into the sports betting space. 

12:26 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Talk me through that. Like you know, for some people it's just natural they're playing poker. It's a form of gambling. Okay, I'm going to start betting on sports. Was it a seamless process for you, or did it follow the same path of a lot of other poker players, where there was, let's say, a lot of learnings to be had along the way? 

12:46 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
So there are definitely some learnings. We got fortunate early on. There were a couple sites out there that were not super on top of what they were doing. I felt like and you could take some shots at them. I mean, you wouldn't be able to take it a long time and not five dives necessarily, because you'd get a call from that guy. But there were some other sites like you could do stuff like correct score betting after the game had already started because the time zone was inputted incorrectly by somebody with a million bucks and a laptop in Costa Rica. It was like back in the day, some of those operations were not like your ROI on betting correct score when there's only 10 minutes left in soccer games it's pretty high if they leave those props up. So I was able to build a bankroll early on with the poker and that honestly, and then just a lot of expensive mistakes on the way. First, like four sports bets I replaced went 4-0, of course that's just easy peasy. 

13:41 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That's the story. That's the story. That's how they get you. 

13:44 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Yeah, exactly easy peasy, and that's the story. That's the story. Yeah, they get you. Yeah, exactly so it's. Uh, it was definitely a, a learning experience, figuring out you don't necessarily have an edge in all the markets, you know, depending on your approach. And um, I felt like I was much better in college football. We did bet baseball umpires back in the day, um, me and a couple of roommates. This had to be like, oh, three or four, like when you could figure out who they were. That's still, I thought, had an edge back then. 

14:06 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
But that's what 15 years ago now, so, but how did you, um, how did you kind of get where you are today in terms of betting, Like, what are you betting on? Uh, in today's day, I know there's a lot of college football and that's definitely what you're known originate, right, I mean, if somebody I trust has something NFL or baseball. 

14:29 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
I'll certainly get down on some of that and they'll probably ask me for some college football. College football, I'm really, you know, size, totals, props, alts, really kind of just do the whole hog approach on it and I spend a lot of time on each game every week. I do want to give our listeners on cover three a good value. I think last year I was like 60, which is hard to do, honestly, over volume. If you're giving all your picks at the same time, like you know, thursday at lunch, right for college football, I mean, I that's not how I personally bet. I don't just wait to fire all my picks at the same time, you know, each week, um, but no, I'm doing basically everything I can in college football. 

15:08 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Is the origination more of like you know, from a quantitative perspective, or is it more watching the games? 

15:15 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
No. So I think it's actually a combination of both. The power rankings that are out there, like the publicly available ones, I think, have gotten better and better over time and if you're just betting straight FPI, well I think you're losing if you're doing that. But like you know, let's say, connelly, sp plus or any of these other ones out there, you're probably not getting killed but you're not profitable. 

15:35
I don't think, at least not wildly profitable if you're just blindly betting. You know all the bill stuff. But I think if you take one of those as a baseline or make your own right which obviously when I started I couldn't do and then you make manual adjustments to it, that does take quite a bit of time but I think it gives you a different edge against the market, potentially because you're not quite like. I find that some of the stuff I'm on not everybody else is on Right and that that comes from a combination of quantitative and then also watching the games, understanding which of these backup players who now are in play because of injuries might be good or might really need a little more seasoning in college. That's my approach on that. 

16:31 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So I mean just trying to unpack it all, but let's say, a starting quarterback goes down in a college football game, I think you're going to get a very wide distribution of opinions on what that downgrade is worth, for example. So, in your situation, being on top of the pulse of college football and listen for those that don't know Bud like he literally lives and breathes college football for the duration of the season off season you follow him on twitter um, very, very dedicated, would you say that. That's one of the inherent advantages that you think you have is the ability to process these changes within teams, maybe potentially better than someone else in the market definitely yeah, if you're if you're just somebody who's modeling and maybe you're doing multiple sports, you may not have quite as good of a feel. 

17:06 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Generically, you can probably arrive at something close, right? So I don't want to claim I have edges that nobody else has, but I do think just the knowledge of of a lot of the backups how good they are or how poor they are matters a whole lot. Right, you can know what happens if Caleb Williams goes down. But who's the backup? How good is he? That type of stuff, right? Mccall with Coastal, the backup for them really doesn't throw the ball well at all. So you know, grayson is a pretty big drop off within that system. It's also going to affect the total more because they're probably going to drop their pace even more, right? So, understanding little things like that, hey, this backup not only is a downgrade in talent but also in style, so he's more of a runner or they're gonna have to chuck the ball around here. That's gonna impact your total as well. So, yeah, rob, I think that's really like. I try to start quantitative and I feel like I'm decent at taking the qualitative and being able to put a number on understood question for you. 

18:01 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
But here, because this is something that's super interesting a lot of people in the space, always there's a misconception. 

18:07
I think that if you watch the games and you just try to handicap by watching the games and you can't really find an edge and for the most part, for the average, like recreational guy who's just a fantasy football player in nfl, you're not really going to find an edge by you know having a better knowledge of the players. 

18:22
But in college, specifically, it's one area where I found college basketball, college football, the more you know having a better knowledge of the players. But in college, specifically, it's one area where I found college basketball, college football, the more you know, like you mentioned, about the injuries and stuff like that, the more you can actually like really take advantage of it, because the the numbers are so much less efficient than the nfl, the players are so much less known. Question I had for you is do you think there's an edge, more specifically, live betting in college football, given that you might be able to see a guy who went down at the half or something like that and then have pretty much zero indication of what's going to happen in that game with a new qb coming in or with a new, even a running back. A receiver in college could impact a little more, but do you find edges in live betting at all? 

19:01 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
uh, yes, big time, most definitely. Yeah, I Like my ROI in live, even against the increased use, is better. Okay, I think you can really watch college live and do pretty well. 

19:13 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So if you're earning off it, we wouldn't want you to give out anything. That's going to like bust your edge up or anything like that. But what could the listeners maybe gain from in terms of college football live? What are you looking for? 

19:23 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
I think usage and injury and those things go together obviously. But if guys go down, if maybe, if a dude was, you know, didn't practice during the week, and then all of a sudden he's playing but he looks poor, so like I mean they're, they're setting there's so many games on a Saturday right, they're setting these numbers based on the clothes and then adjusting from there. But within the first 20 minutes if he looks like crap, then that number is still going to be based mostly on the close and then adjust based on what's happened in the game so far. Statistically I don't think a lot of these sites are moving this stuff based on how well these kids are running around. In the first 20 minutes they're going to move to the market some, but I do think some of those are early stuff. If you know what you're looking for, kind of go in with an attack plan if you will. 

20:07 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I think that's pretty useful no-transcript be better than the starter and then start the rest of the way. It happens every year multiple, multiple games. So is that something that you think would be valuable? That's what I've always envisioned. If I were to bet college, I'd do something like that. 

20:47 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
I don't know if it's worth your time to do it for all positions. I think for quarterbacks it most likely is, depending on how many games you're watching, or at least you know for a couple of leagues. If you're intently just watching those and live betting those, maybe you do know those teams a little bit better. That's where you can kind of I think that's kind of a silly strategy to use to bet college football pregame because there's just there's not enough opportunities, but in game there's opportunities to bet every play. So if you do happen to know a certain league or two really well, maybe you could go a little more in depth. 

21:16
On the player ratings, I would say for me it's just quarterback and then just having knowledge in my notes of potential cluster spots for injuries Okay, they're already down to a lineman. The third one makes them get to a freshman who is not ready to play ball, that type of thing. Okay, hey, they have one guy who can really check this number one receiver. If he goes down, the potential drop-off is bigger because of who they're and knowing what the defense does. Is it more of a zone concept team? Do they play boundary field? Are they actually going to travel that cornerback with the number one guy. Different teams play that different way. So that is the kind of stuff I don't think we have in college right now. Hey, this team always travels this corner against this number one guy, but if you watch you're like, okay, they actually match him up quite a bit with this dude. 

22:10 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's sort of some of your stuff you can take a look for which is not in, I think, like assists or or pff at least not to my knowledge. 

22:12
Yeah, I think that's a very good point and that's one of the challenges I've always had with trying to model college football is that the data, um, that you have access to is not at the same level of the nfl. The nfl is. College football is improving as well, don't get me wrong, but the the NFL, is at this point of sophistication now where you can find everything right, like you know, every single coverage that was played I mean, we have player movements in real time nowadays, and so on and so forth. So that's a very interesting point of view, and the fact that the rest of the market doesn't have access to that data, I think would create an inherent advantage for someone who's able to just watch a game and pick that up with their eyes and say I am able to capture this, and I know that there's somebody out there that's a quant that is running numbers, but they're definitely not accounting for this right now. 

22:55 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
I really do think you need to. You have to start with some sort of quant base, right? I really don't think you can just bet this stuff qualitatively. I think it's more like you need to start quant. You need to have a model, and then I think you can just bet this stuff qualitatively. I think it's more like you need to start quant. You need to have a, a model, and then I think you can make some adjustments. No, but you have to understand what's in the model and what's not in the model. You can't just all just watch this. Maybe there's some people who can't. I don't think I could do that, right, I want to start with my numbers and then make adjustments to that. And then you got to remember to back out your adjustments that you made each week, because if you're using you know X number of reduced points for for this guy, well, how many games have they played without him? How many games they played with him? And then you got to add him back in when he comes back. 

23:34 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Agreed. Yeah, the cluster injuries and stuff that you mentioned, but those it kind of exists in the NFL. The reason I'm like hung up on the live betting is because in the NFL, if betting is because in the nfl, if a guy leaves the game like hey, think of it this way, there's never been more than like nine nfl games on at the same time and that's in. Like if there's a big pack one o'clock slate, usually there's like seven, six, seven, and then it goes even even lower. College you sometimes get like 30, 40 and I've seen scenarios where you know nfl, you'll get a notification for like mundane players who don't even make a difference that they're out. 

24:05
Like julio jones left the game, like this, you know what I mean. Or like this guy went to locker room, this guy's in the medical tent, it's it's readily available and it's factored into the lines. In college, like there was a game this year where, like bo nicks got injured and it wasn't even really on, like it just didn't impact anything for like 15 minutes and I was just like, oh, like they're playing a backup QB here, like what is this? What is this Like? Is this factored in the line? Is this factored in? And then I didn't even capitalize on it and then by the time I did it I had already adjusted. It was crazy. 

24:35 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
The Sugar Bowl when Matt Corral went down against Baylor right open. This is, this is kind of, you know, crude to say, but you have to be firing, especially in a bowl game type situation where, like, this guy's got a draft future. If he's tweaked at all, he ain't coming back in the game, I would assume. So I, you know that. Yeah, that's uh. Quarterbacks, injuries in college don't spread quite like doing the nfl no, and nfl is any player. 

24:59 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
It's not even a quarterback like. 

25:01 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Let me get a notification, like michael carter's in the medical special teams player, like you know questionable bursitis questionable, the return like, yeah, you get everything, you're, you're completely right about that um, the way that the market reacts in real time, I mean. But I'm very interested in how you um, like, how you get the confidence to to formulate your opinion on player, where this, this comes from right, because there's a lot of people who will just watch games and they have an opinion on a specific player and they say I'm watching this guy, this quarterback stinks, I'm going to bet against him, and then they just lose their money regularly over and over, like their opinion is not validated because that's not enough. Like they're not overcoming the vig that a sportsbook sets or so on and so forth. Now you have access to players, like you see, you see teams practice in the offseason and stuff like that. Where you're based in florida, I'm sure you you have access to all sorts of players. 

25:56
But is it just your eye test watching these guys play? Are you reaching out to people that you know who can validate an opinion on a specific player? Because, like, this is an inexact science, right? And you get to a point where you're at the level that you're at now, where you're probably extremely confident and a quarterback gets injured. Okay, I think I know the value of this backup. How do you get to that point? What goes into that? 

26:18 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Sure. So, rob, I don't know that it's necessarily certainty on my behalf, it's just is your opinion on a player better than all the quants who are moving into the market? Right, like I don't need to be perfect, I just need to be a little bit better than everybody else in order to overcome the VIG. So one of the reasons I still cover recruiting even though a lot of guys that do national college football don't is like I really care about the inputs, right, I want to see these guys from an early age body types, understanding how twitchy is this guy, because that's oftentimes the last chance we're going to be able to see a player before he hits the field in college. There's no preseason games where all these backups get in. It's what did you see in this kid as a 17, 18-year-old? How does he move, how does he project? And 24-7 sports has been the most accurate recruiting service out there for I think, like seven years running now, so very proud to work. You know to work with us and they do a great job. But we also need to understand kind of like this guy a this rating based more on upside, or is he more this rating based on some combination of floor and upside, because all that impacts how ready is he to go into the game? And there's still some guesswork, right. The guy might to me my eyes might have been like, all right, is he ready to play this fall? No, like the last time I saw him, which was probably in, I don't know, november, right State championship game type stuff and then he comes in and he has a bang-up spring practice Does well, coaches liked him. He comes in and balls out in the game, like I've certainly been wrong about guys before in a game. 

27:45
One of the things I like to do is use data for like down to down type stuff and then click through the explosive plays, like because that is stuff I feel like you can watch. You can watch 10 plays per game if you want, just to figure out okay, how are they hitting their explosives, the, the success rate stuff. I don't have time to watch 70 plays on each college game, but I try to get through most of the explosive stuff each week. You can find those and just go through them fast. Sometimes they're hitting explosives because a corner fell down. Other times they're hitting explosives because they're making high-level throws or they're really showing some physical dominance, and that, to me is important to figure out where the explosives come from. The success rate stuff, I think it kind of generally tells the truth. 

28:27 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, see, I mean just on my end. I think the most daunting thing about betting college football is that there's so many teams, there's so many players, and that for someone who bases their opinions based off of numbers. You know, I produce numbers for college football. I compare them to Bill Connolly. I compare them to public college football. I compare them to bill connelly, I compare them to public models. I compare them to people who do well in college football. I don't have public models and there's no, there's not a lot of deviation in all these models. There's we're all like very similar on numbers and it's always like where can I possibly gain an edge? And then you and the openers get bet to those well, that's what I'm saying immediately, right, yeah? 

29:02
very so it's like I don't know where I have an edge here or not. And then the thought of having to drill down into these teams. You know we have Brad Powers on the Hammer betting network as one guy who's already betting win totals for next year and stuff like that, and he's on his pulse and to me that's just like I don't want to compete with this right. So I don't want to compete with this right, so that's. I've always wondered about that and that's why I feel like college football is a different breed, in that it is one of the sports just like college basketball as well where you can just literally keep up with teams or players and conference and win. 

29:37 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Well, think about this NFL. You rarely, will ever have a team like I'm back national championship this year TCU. Obviously they didn't win, but they made the national championship game. They were a chance of winning one game and earlier in the year they were like 200 and something to one to win. That never happens in the nfl. 

29:55 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Yeah and I think I had them 28 to 1 for the big 12 and hedged it out because I was like kansas state is after watching 12 games. Like kansas state is more physical than these guys. Like Kansas State should be a slightly bigger favorite. 

30:06 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Oh, you ended up losing that one. 

30:07 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Damn, that was yeah I had to hedge out of it. But like to me I bet that because I knew that TCU recruited really good athletes. To me they kind of looked like they had checked out on their coach a little bit the two prior years. Dykes is a good motivator, you know we had seen his prior stops. The guys seemed to buy into what he's selling immediately and I love both coordinator hires. Like guys I know in the American hated facing Joe Gillespie when he was at Tulsa. The D coordinator Now Georgia liked playing him apparently in the national title game but everybody else in the league seemed to not like facing. Is Lincoln Riley's little brother right? And that whole Riley family coaches football pretty well. For those who don't follow college football, lincoln Riley is the head coach at USC now, kind of an offensive wizard. So these guys. 

30:53
Texas doesn't feel right to me as that big of a favorite in the league. Oklahoma has a new coach and lost a ton to the portal. We should not have that much cost certainty at the top. Where within this drop-down menu are we seeing this cost certainty not reflected? Like TCU is the one that has the upside and also the scheduling quirks in college football matter a whole lot. The Big 12 has 10 teams which is crazy anyway, because 12 and 10 teams but that means you play five road games and four home games, or reverse, depending on the year, and TCU is one of these ball clubs. They play the five home, four road split and when they play the four road split they get kansas as one of their road games, which traditionally means you're only playing about three true road games and one walker. 

31:35 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So like that's the kind of stuff I don't know in the nfl, if you get that, that type of stuff, I don't really model the nfl, yeah definitely you do but like so with the, the NFL, you get the schedule stuff at the beginning of the year, but like it's, it's as soon as that schedule goes out. Everyone's already on top of that. 

31:50 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Like the win totals, no, but they don't even move that much because you already play a consistent like. So you already know eight, seven games from your division and then you already know that you're going to cross over so roughly, like it's not, like you're having a huge edge on the schedule coming up. When the schedule comes out in college, some of those lower-end teams you're like oh, these guys are going to be favored in nine games this year and look at the odds I'm getting on them. It's crazy. Even the win totals. You mentioned Brad Power starting early. I'm curious to see if Bud started already. On the win totals, because I know people have been –'ve seen on twitter like phenomenal prices, like, oh, I got this team over, like to get three over three wins, and now they're like five and a half already. 

32:32 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Like crazy I've not fired on any win totals yet. Um, there were some texas a&m 80 to one and ford state 100 to one at some very like us rec books that uh might have told my friends you should be. Those numbers should be like half of what they are, uh at at least. So, uh, yeah, if you find any more. I think it was a stool special on the fsu one. So, uh, no, I'm not doing win totals yet. 

32:55
I I do think that I mean, first of all, you're tying up your money for for a long time, most of the books that I think you can get credit at are not posting win totals at this point, right? The other thing on this is the transfer portal, which is new and I love it, right, because good luck modeling that, and that's really more qualitative, which is, I mean, you can model it. I think you need to try, but it's also really pretty difficult. So we have two transfer portal windows in college football. We have the early one, which closes on Wednesday, and we also have the post-spring one, which there will be some more studs jumping the portal because they look around and they see what their buddies got in name, image and likeness payments and they're like, well, I'm not getting that, I'm going to go test my value on the open market. And then also occasionally, some guys who lose their jobs right, who maybe shouldn't and are good players. I mean think about this In college. 

33:47
I guess the NFL too. But Stetson Bennett wasn't the starter for Georgia to start last year. Cam Rising wasn't the starter for Utah. Max Duggan didn't start for TCU. They started Morris' son and then also Hendon Hooker at Tennessee did not start. Colleges routinely pick the wrong guy to start. 

34:08 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That's what I was saying. 

34:09 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Sometimes a guy will go down and the backup is way better, and then starts the rest of the season and you have to know and this also applies to what happens in the spring ball and the staff says hey, we think you're going to be the starter, you're the backup, and the backup's like peace, I'm gone. I don't love betting win totals unless they're really really off in in january, like I, I, like, I, I, if you fire them on in april, or may I get it. But there's a lot of uncertainty still to come fair enough if you could give out something. 

34:37 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I guess, now that we're on, people are going to be listening to this this week. What guys are we looking for in the transfer portal that are going to make the biggest impact right now? 

34:45 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
So, all right, a couple guys to know Tanner Mordecai, I think going to Wisconsin. We released our top 25 on Cover 3 the other day. I had Wisconsin as just outside. I think Wisconsin probably needs to be rated as a top 25 team at this point. 

35:00 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So Mordecai, formerly of, I guess, smu, was he on. 

35:02 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Of SMU right. So Wisconsin, I'm confident they're going to play good defense. They have basically my entire life. They get Luke Fickle, the Cincinnati coach, to come over. He finally takes a job. He's been very picky about what job he took. Everybody kind of wanted him for quite a while. He took Cincinnati to the playoff last year, so I think that's an upgrade in head coach. 

35:21
Defensively, I'm confident they'll play good defense because he was a great defensive coordinator for a long time Ohio State and whatnot. And they went and got Phil Longo from North Carolina who is maybe not easy to work with because he just cares about scoring points. But I think if you're a defensive guy as a head coach and you hire a guy as their offensive coordinator whose only job is to score points and doesn't really care about what position he puts the defense in, then maybe the head coach regulates that a little bit, but lets the guy cook. They also went and got Bryson Green from Oklahoma State. They got two good receivers from Cincinnati and a couple other kids as well. They've done a nice job in the portal. So I would definitely say Wisconsin's a team that just in the last week I've kind of reconsidered my position on, just with how many dudes they're adding, fair enough. 

36:04 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Any other players that haven't yet transferred that we should be keeping an eye on. 

36:08 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
I want to see where Spencer Sanders goes, the Oklahoma State quarterback. He's still in the portal. He hasn't announced the destination yet. I think he's a quality player. Got banged up some this year. I don't know what's going on at Oklahoma State, or at least not confident enough to where I can say it on a podcast, but they've had like eight starters hit the portal already, which is not normal for a team that has been pretty good over Mike Gundy's tenure. He's one of them. It's a little weird to me that he's not found a new home yet. Given that the portal closes tomorrow, he can still go in the spring window. I will note. Sometimes guys hit the portal and they probably should have just waited to graduate, right, because that that increases your chance of going somewhere, cause a lot of these schools won't take you if you don't have your degree, if you've been in school for 10 semesters. Right. And it's again, college football is a weird thing to follow, right? The NFL doesn't really have this. It's like here's the most money. I'd like to play for your team. 

37:02 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yes, I just learned something new right now that I didn't know. 

37:05
I didn't know that either I had no clue. I'm very curious. I want to get your thoughts on whether your knowledge translates to being able to handicap the NFL draft. So I work closely with some people who live and breathe college football as well and I have one end of the spectrum that tells me Rob as well, and I have one end of the spectrum that tells me Rob, I like I, can you know they're not correctly picking these mock drafts in the first round, like they say that they can, but they've had a lot of success betting the NFL draft because of their knowledge of college football. 

37:38
And then I have guys on the other end of the spectrum that are like no, I'm horrible in picking the NFL draft because I, you know, have my biases of this player should go higher, this player shouldn't be drafted here. I cannot possibly see an nfl take team taking this guy in the top 10, and so on and so forth. I'm curious whether or not you bet the nfl draft yourself and if, personally, you find that your knowledge of college football translates to being able to predict success at the NFL draft level. 

38:05 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
I would say I bet it every single year and I'm generally profitable. Like I'm not saying I'm murdering it every year, but it's, and it's low limits right For the most part, unless you got a million outs. But yeah, I've been able to do fairly well in the NFL draft. I think the biggest thing is a you may know what some of these quote-unquote character concerns actually are. Right, the nebulous tweet from whatever guy comes out this team is is sketchy on this guy because of character concerns. And maybe the character concern is you know, this guy likes to fight or maybe the character is something much worse. Right, and so understanding. Like wait, was this? Was this kid a dumb ass? When I saw him play seven on seven, did he act like an idiot in high school at these camps? And some of these guys like yeah, that tracks, he's generally an idiot. It just doesn't act like a guy you'd want to have and pay millions of dollars to and sometimes like that's, that's a little sketch man. 

39:02
I'm not saying I know everything about these kids, I certainly don't, but at least on what you're able to observe, I think that helps. I'll hit up some of our guys at CBS and say, hey, man, like on the early mock drafts. Body type wise, this kid doesn't look to me like somebody who goes first round, because a lot of these dudes who do the early mock drafts have not been able to see these guys in person. And we, the early mock drafts, have not been able to see these guys in person and we have like in it, like if you follow recruiting, you've seen these dudes at kind of the last underwear olympics. They've done until the combine, right, yeah, so that that kind of stuff I think is a bit of an edge. Um, if they still do like fastest man at the combine, props, that's kind of stuff. Just because we've seen these kids race before you know, and their last verified 40 day ran is probably from the high school race. 

39:47 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
See, like I personally think that this would be a big inherent advantage and, by the way, I'm not accusing CBS of doing this in any way but I have followed NFL mock draft. I live and breathe like NFL mock drafts, like I'm already on PFF's tool myself doing like mock drafts for the Dallas Cowboys this year and whatever, and I know which players are in general ranges. But as someone who consumes tons of mock drafts, you typically get like your first breed, where a bunch of people put things out and then everybody kind of uses that as the baseline to create their own mock draft going forwards and they shuffle things up here and there and then you'll get a prominent guy like Daniel Jeremiah or whoever, who comes off the board with something else. This guy put someone in his top 10. And guess what? Now Jeremiah is very well respected. Everybody else is going and putting that player in their top 10. 

40:39
And what I find is that, as someone who's consumed this stuff for years, a lot of these mock drafts are really an imitation of someone else's work without any knowledge. So I figured that if you have some sort of knowledge of of college and you're able to exactly like you said, like this player doesn't have the body or the frame to be a first round pick. This quarterback doesn't have the arm strength to be a first round pick. I feel like that could be a huge advantage in being able to bet these. 

41:05 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Yeah, I mean so. For instance, I like Clark Phillips, the Utah corner, right, but I was seeing him in like the top 15 of some of these mock drafts back in August and I mean, to me Clark Phillips is like a really, really good college player and maybe he'll turn out to be Asante Samuel Jr. But there's a lot of guys built like a sante samuel jr and there are very few who are actually as good as he is in the league and that's I mean it's awesome for sante, right. But guys like that like okay, is this really a top 15 pick? What would he have to run? Just given my recollection of how big he is? 

41:43
Right, did he run that well in high school? Like he ran well, but did he run? And if you're that size, you probably need to be running what four, three like legitimately on on the laser there at the combine. So I think it's. Can you differentiate a college body from a pro body? And that's not always easy. But sometimes it's fairly obvious that the mock drafts now are so much better than they were two months ago, even though we really haven't played what. Maybe three more weeks of football. 

42:10 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Right, and that's typically going to be the case. As we get closer to the draft, there's going to be more information out there, but I can think of all sorts of applications of being knowledgeable in college that would help you in predicting the NFL draft, like when Matt Rule was the coach of Carolina Cliff Kingsbury. These guys come from college to the NFL. If you have any insight into what they were looking for at a college level and you know, that. 

42:32
Johnson with your Cowboys exactly and and they have impact like because obviously it also depends on the team and how much the coach is going to be in that war room and have a say in who they're drafting. But little nuances like that, like that could just be, in and of itself can be enough to gain an edge. And you know, as an NFL fan, I see mock drafts every year. I'm a huge Cowboys, dallas Cowboys fan and I'll see certain people mock to the Cowboys and I know that there's no chance they're taking that player because I followed their specific coaches and their GM for and the team for years and I know what they look for and I think at a college level, if you know these coaches as well that make the step up to the NFL, I think there's probably a monumental advantage in having knowledge of that coach and what their tendencies are. 

43:17 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
But also just knowing the exact team and where they're picking, because this is like you put out a mock draft two months ago. Like you said, you don't even know the final position. So like Bears getting number one overall drastically decreases the chance of a QB going first overall. It probably is still likely, probably still likely to trade the pick or take one of the two QBs. But it's like okay, if Houston had got that pick, pretty much a guarantee that they're taking one of those two QB. And then, even further to that, people rank it based on like their own ranking and not based on the teams. 

43:48
So a lot of guys are like I talked to guys who are like, oh, b john robinson, like this guy, yeah, he's great, but like he shouldn't go before like 28th because a running back should never go at the top of the first round. Then it's like okay, well, probably someone will take them. One of those like dust franchises will take, like we got to see now. Now you look like okay, who has like seventh overall, eighth overall, ninth overall, that has historically taken a chance on a running back and might actually take that, take them right, whether it's a bad pick or not. You know what I'm saying, bud no doubt. 

44:20 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
So like like last year, to kind of put a name to this I I was pretty heavy on krie, Yep, Right, I know he was dinged at some sometimes at Florida, but as a recruit this guy always wanted to go against the very best player in South Florida and there's like there's some fearlessness to that, because that's where a lot of the best receivers come from, as well as the top TVs, and if you get cooked you end up on Tik and Instagram, right. So like there's, some of these guys will just kind of duck reps and my thought was like all right, is Kyrie even really not going to go in the first round? Like he's long. His dad played in the NFL, His uncle played, obviously, for Notre Dame. 

45:00
He's got the bloodlines, he's a good athlete. Just based on how hard he practiced in these camps, you have to think that Florida's coaches would speak well of him to the NFL, Because all these like that's a part too is like is this guy a dumbass internally? What are the coaches going to say, Right, Right, Yep, and you know. So that was one and I was like, okay, that's a guy that I'd be shocked if he got out of the first round just based on that. 

45:26 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I mean like it's the knowledge like this that listen, I know a lot of people who beat the NFL draft, a couple of people that are part of the Hammer Betting Network Joey Kanish, hitman they have a lot of success betting the draft every year and I think so much of the market, as dumb as it sounds. 

45:47
I used to consult for offshore sports books. That would be almost the first people to put out lines, sometimes on year, on NFL draft and I can vividly remember the day standing over the shoulder of someone who was putting out draft lines, who just had a mock draft database open and he was just like yeah, yeah, here, you know, we'll put minus one, 20 on both sides should be okay where? And like I, obviously small limits, but just having inherent advantage, like knowledge or understanding of players, coaches, what might happen, bloodlines, exactly like you mentioned, like stuff like that that no offense to a you know a random beat writer from some spot, but like they're not, they're putting five minutes of thought into putting this mock draft out there and someone is using that and taking that as knowledge and I mean you almost have to like, if you can separate yourself from that, realize that that's kind of useless and you have this other stuff. I think that there's a pretty big edge to be had there. 

46:39 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
This year's going to be tough Cause I don't know what Bryce Young's medicals are. No, yeah, no one really knows, no one does. And he's also small. I mean not like tiny, but is he going to measure in six foot? Legit, I don't know. So who do you? 

46:52 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
like between those two QBs that are just like not who's going to actually go for it Between Stroud and. Bryce. 

46:58 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, I kind of like Stroud man. He's always played really well. Both these guys are really really good prospects and I think I would take all of them, maybe even including Levis, over anybody from last year's draft. I thought the quarterback position took a dip the one year we had Fields Lawrence, and obviously Lawrence hasn't thrown the ball very well. 

47:20 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Don't forget about Zach Wilson, who we had in that draft. 

47:23 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Oh yeah, I'm talking about from the from like the elite 11, like quarterback camps, right, right, like, okay, these guys physically are throwing the ball on a level that is close to what the college counselors throw it when they come back, like the college guys come back to be the counselors for the week. The next year was like this feels like a, like a regional event, not a national. Now, good, regional, but still the level of player is not the same from every year. Not all five stars are created equal. Interesting. 

47:50 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
All right, I've got to ask your opinion on two players here. 

47:53 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
If you don't mind. 

47:55 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Okay, number one, so later round. Qb declared for the draft Stanford. 

48:00 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
QB Tanner McKee Thoughts draft stanford qb tanner mckee thoughts. It's a really hard eval because stanford's roster has just declined so hard in recent years. He was also a kid, you know, I what he took the lds mission, I believe. Right, so he's an older kid, yeah, um, what? Yeah, I'm trying to remember this was because he was what? 2017 high school class. All right, so stanford, really, they very rarely take transfers. They also, since the advent of the transfer portal, they've been killed by kids transferring out because their grad school doesn't play ball with their undergrad. So stanford will lose its best player because he can't get into grad school there, whereas basically every other college in the country will play ball and be like, yeah, here's basket weaving, yeah, right. 

48:50 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
How to tie your shoes. 101, you know. 

48:52 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Right, exactly here. Come get your doctorate in this Awesome Stanford doesn't do that. So I think their roster quality has declined. Additionally, stanford's roster quality overall since the early signing period, which is first year, was 2018. The most vocal coach against that by far was David Shaw, because he knew it hurt Stanford, in my opinion, because Stanford was not offering admission to these kids by the time they were signing early. So Stanford was like, hey, will you wait and sign in February, which some of the kids could Stanford education would, but many would, because they they want to just get it done and get out, get it out of the way. So I think it's important to remember like he's not playing with the same quality of player that like Andrew Luck played with and he does have some physical juice, like the arm is a pretty big arm and he's not a terrible athlete for his size. It wouldn't shock me. I'm not projecting to do well, but he does have some tools that are like there are some tools there. 

49:46 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So would you take him mid-round? I don't know, like fifth round, maybe fifth, so just fifth round. 

49:52 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Flyer, and then probably never plays a game, but you never know or he gets in as a backup, like brock purdy and just you know. 

49:57 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Fair enough sure I've watched. I lost a lot of money on stanford this, which is why I'm asking I was I was against. 

50:05
Stanford. You're against Stanford. Good, good, I'm glad to hear you made some cash. Took it from me directly but I I lost a lot of money betting Stanford this year and every time I'd watch him like this guy is absolute, like I can't, I can't believe this. And then, sure enough, I'm looking at mock drafts and I see him back the third round. I'm like no, no, no, this guy's not getting drafted back the third round If he does absolute garbage. The second guy I have to ask you about is North Carolina receivers, a projected first-round pick pretty much by everyone. Obviously, I'm sure you know who I'm talking about Josh Downs. Is he going to be good? 

50:41 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
or no. I don't know if I would take him first round. It would depend on what he runs. He's not the biggest guy. What do they list him at? Like 511, I would guess I gotta take a look. 

50:50 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'm looking at just the mocks here. Every mock I have like a, a site that pulls up a bunch of mocks, every single mock has him in the first round. He's anywhere between like 18 overall and some mocks all the way up to like 31st. Oh, damn. 

51:04 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Really Okay, cause I was looking here at, uh, ryan Wilson, our latest CBS mock does not have him in the first round, so he is listed at five 10. 

51:15
Okay, yeah, so I want to make sure they weren't listening to him at a six foot. Generally my rule is on these guys that are that are sub six foot they're going to have to run really well Downs. Catches the ball pretty well. That they dropped against short detect killed him, but generally catches the ball pretty well, competes for the ball Well. He gets open because he's a good route runner. He does have like good short area quickness. He's a guy that likes to compete and is a player that I think will probably do well in the NFL. So if he snuck late first round it wouldn't shock me, but that's good. With all these dudes who are sub six, how do you score? Do you score because you're a red zone guy, you have catch radius, or do you score because you have deep speed like a Tyreek Hill, right? That's kind of what you need to figure out. What does he run at the combine? It's going to be really important. 

52:00 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Well, when I look at a lot of the smaller guys, like if you're not a big, if you're not like a big freak receiver and you're not the talent of like a devonta smith obviously heisman winner, like guaranteed first rounder what I'm looking at typically for college has been like do they got? Do these guys actually make good catches? Like do they have good hands? And the reason being is like that's the one difference between the nfl and college is like if you're on the sidelines or back of the end zone, like sometimes you'll, you'll, they'll throw the ball. 

52:28
It's happened two weeks ago with um one of the receivers I think it was deandre hopkins, they or yeah, one like one of the top receivers, he was devante adams. Sorry, yep, someone threw him a ball. He caught it. And then the the announcer is like oh, I don't know if he got in there and then it replayed and you just see he catches it right in two feet, toe tap. And then the announcer's like, well, I'm sorry for even doubting him. Like you just know, when you see like deandre hopkins or you see like a devante adams on the sidelines not like the big, the biggest speed guys, they're not burnt like they still do, but they're not like tyreek hill level speed. But when it comes to that, those catches like they just make them and they're inbounds. And when you see, like another receiver, for example, even a guy was good but just a little bit worse, like gabriel davis you'll see him on the sideline he has no idea where he is, and then it'll be like, oh, he caught it. 

53:18
And then you look like, no, he didn't get the second foot. Yeah, when I watched downs this year it was like every time they threw it to him in like a tight situation. He just didn't know how to make those catches, and that was even with obviously only needing to put one foot in in college and he just made too many of those mistakes not even drops. But I'm like, listen, this guy's not like a barn burner, he's not the biggest guy. If he can't make those catches, like I don't know if he's going to do too well in the nfl, but again, he's projected to go back of the back of the first round top of the second. So it's not like I'm making like a it's. It is a pretty bold call. He should, in theory, do well in the nfl, but I don't think he will is a flowers in, in, uh in in those aggregated mocks let me uh, let me pull the boston college, boston College kid Zay Flowers. 

54:05
Yeah, so Zay Flowers, they have him at a consensus 39th. 

54:15 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
So projected second round. He's listed in some people's mocks around 20. 

54:19 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Like I see, some mocks here have him at 20. Pro Football Focus has him at 25. And then there's a few that have them like in obviously in the second round, and a couple actually that haven't been round three but he was like the only guy on at Boston college team this year. 

54:33 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
I mean they they were like a really good example of cluster injuries on the offensive line. They lost four dudes to the draft last year. Their best returning offensive lineman blew his knee playing basketball. So then they were down all five, which is difficult, and then they lost four more during the season and had to pull over defensive lineman to the offensive line, which is basically and their quarterback Djokovic got hurt. He's transferring to Pitt. That was kind of like the only dude they had. He beats Louisville basically by himself. That's a guy I do think has some serious juice. It was pretty well known that he turned down a I think they said like $800,000 NIL offer to stay at Boston college, allegedly. Of course I don't know who the offer was from, certainly somewhere South. I don't think a lot of teams North of BC are offering NIL money but like that's a guy I was like okay, context kind of matters, teams are going to like what they see. He still plays hard on like the worst BC team in quite a while. You know, interesting. 

55:29 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So yeah, good, I have one player I want to ask about who's already a pro. 

55:32 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, go. 

55:33 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Who's already a pro? Just because it's been talked about about a million times Kenny Pickett with the small hands. I can't even tell you how many times I've heard there's no chance kenny pickett will succeed in pittsburgh in cold weather because his hands are way too small before we get into this. 

55:48 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
You know I was looking at the mock drafts right now and I pulled up last mock right now, last year's mock. 

55:53 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Like a year out from that it had malik willis projected as the number one, like well literally a chance at the number one through a couple bombs in one of like the the workouts. They went viral on Twitter and people were going nuts. They're like, oh, malik Wills. 

56:05 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That was only a year and a half ago. He was projected top five and then now it's just like this guy's already been written off, left for dead. 

56:12 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
You know who that's going to be in this draft, right who Richardson in Florida. Maybe, I mean, his arm is nuts. 

56:27 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
The numbers don't back it up. There you go, but, but, but it's actually so. But josh allen wasn't even good in in college and everyone's like this is a bust. And then he had a shit first year and now he's the best player in the league, or second best and people think daniel jones is following the same career arc now, after one playoff, yeah I know I don't. 

56:40 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Don't get me wrong like I don't I don't know, man, like I don't really see when I watch Josh Allen, when I watch Daniel Jones, I don't really see Josh Allen ability. 

56:50 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
We will see, all right. So anyways, let's get your opinion, are you on? 

56:53 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
the Daniel Jones is Josh Allen level. No, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not, oh sorry. 

56:57 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So here's the thing, right, you got Josh Allen. Horrible rookie season. I myself, like this guy just doesn't have it. And then over time, you start to see him. You know he improves his, his downfield accuracy and he can. The arm strength is is crazy, and I think a lot of the talk now with Daniel Jones was like okay, guy, that was drafted highly. Now, granted, that might've been a reach by the giants in that draft, but drafted highly. And he just hasn't had the been a reach by the Giants in that draft, but drafted highly. And he just hasn't had the coaching around him, right, I mean, look at who the Giants head coaches have been. Finally, they bring in Brian Dayball, great offensive coordinator from the Bills, and this is where the connection happens, right, it's like, oh, dayball did this stuff with Josh Allen, he's going to do it with Danny Dimes and I personally don't see it. But he wins a playoff game in Minnesota, looks great. And now, all of a sudden, the comparisons are starting to be drawn. 

57:53 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
All right, okay. 

57:53 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I can tell that you don't buy it, you don't buy it. 

57:57 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
It's okay. Maybe he'll be good. I don't know if he's taking over games the way that. 

58:03 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I feel like the Giants are going to offer him like a four or five year deal with a shit ton of guaranteed money and it's going to be a big mistake. I'll eat my words if it happens. I have lots of bad takes that people can dig up over time, but Danny Dimes, 25 million a year for five years I don't think that's going to be a team friendly deal. 

58:22 - Zack Phillips (Other)
I don't you want to hear a bad. Take Someone in the office who can overhear our recording. He's our resident draft expert. Oh no, he just sent me a message and said tell the guys, malik Willis will be a top 20 player in the next five years. Can he hear the episode right now? That's what he said. 

58:38 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
yeah, Didn't he get benched for Josh Dobbs? Yeah, he got benched for Josh Dobbs, he did get Josh Dobbs and. 

58:44 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I saw a Titans journal thing today on Twitter post saying which one of these would you want to start next season, and it included Brady Lamar, jackson, derek, carr, tannehill, willis, josh Dobbs. And then four of the comments were like please, not Malik. 

59:00 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Willis. Honestly, I can say that there's always recency bias built in whenever you see like a bad quarterback play. Recently, malik willis might be the worst throwing quarterback I've ever seen in the nfl. I mean he they don't even trust him to throw like they. They literally just want him to drop back and hand the ball off to derrick henry. If he has double digit passing attempts in a game, I think the titans like they review it and hand the ball off to Derek Henry If he has double digit passing attempts in a game, I think the Titans like they review it in the next week and be like we got to dial this back, like you, think fields would be good on the Titans. 

59:31
I love Justin Fields on the Titans, though. Specifically, I think, a guy with that much athleticism I love, I love Justin Fields. 

59:40 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
I think he's like jumbo Russell. 

59:41 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Wilson. 

59:42 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, I'm guys fields. I think he's like jumbo. Russell wilson yeah, guys, russell wilson is I don't know what's going on now with this russ slander but like gino, the fact that gino smith is now seattle's all and I know there's one more, one more extra game right this year but gino smith already passed him in passing yards for a single season like I don't know man, I don't know man, I don't know about. 

01:00:02 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Russ. Well, so the other thing I hit last year NFL draft-wise was basically under on all the quarterbacks. I refuse to believe these guys are. These are first-round quarterbacks. Like what are we looking at, guys? I mean, have you ever seen these dudes in person? This is not. This is not really what they look like to me. 

01:00:22 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
When I'm looking at a first-round quarterback, I mean you could say Bryce Young is three close Like over in the draft Closer to the second round closer to. 

01:00:30 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Yeah right, but yeah correct. Willis physically kind of looks the part, just body type and arm strength, but that that he frees offense just schemes everything for you, right? I think there was a lot of one read stuff there, so it doesn't shock me that there's a little bit of struggle, learning curve wise. But maybe that's also an argument for not giving up on a guy. If he really never learned it, can you teach it to him? I don't know, they're maybe, maybe not. I think the quarterbacks this year are better. Like stroud would have been the best quarterback in last year's draft, levis would have. Bryce would have physical talent wise Richardson probably would have too. So it's definitely better than it was last year. 

01:01:14 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I do want to do my due diligence on asking you everything college football related that I possibly can, and I think in digging through some forums online and how people specifically bet college football. There is a notion out there that a lot of people just like to focus on one or two specific conferences and they say I watch all these games in this specific conference, rather than all these teams and having the entire board available to me. I just like to keep things tight knit. I know these teams better than other people. Now, obviously, everyone online that posts online, they're all winning betters, right. 

01:01:49 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Like 99.9% of people are winning betters out there, but this seems to be a very common strategy for people out there Curious your thoughts, in that you are probably going to have more insight into those teams than somebody who focuses on the whole country. But the obvious downside to me is that you have a very limited number of games you can actually bet. Like, if I'm just watching the SEC would be a bad example if everybody watched it. If I'm just watching the Sun Belt, I only have seven games per week to bet, assuming no bye weeks. Maybe you feel like you have some derivative edges there that people won't have. I kind of doubt that if you're not at least starting from a quant base. 

01:02:42
Now for live betting, that could be worth worth it, because I don't really know how many games you're able to watch live at one time. It's it's setup dependent. It's also like you need to be able to switch games in your setup in terms of betting and also in terms of viewing. If you wanted to just focus on, like your, your pre-game live plan on one league and just watch those games, that could maybe make some sense because you would intuitively know those players better, I guess. 

01:03:08 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Um, but your volume is so reduced if that's your pregame strategy right I think, and also on top of that, like, what about the out of conference games? Right, like if you're focused on the sunbelt and they play a team out of the mountain west or whatever, you have no idea what that other team is Like. You might have this preconceived notion that, okay, maybe the team I'm watching all the time is overrated or underrated, but you have nothing about the other team. 

01:03:33 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Right, it's really not a great strategy. It is a decent strategy if you want to avoid losing lots of money. Right, because you're not just firing and stuff. You don't have edges on it If you're not just firing and stuff. 

01:03:49 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You don't have edges on it if you're not a good player. It would uh, it could help you not lose as much. That's not really sure it's a winning strategy. Well, I, I think for, for pro bettors, one of the appeals of college sports is the number of games period. And listen, maybe you can't. You don't get the same liquidity on a college basketball game or, um, even a smaller college football game, although limits are fairly high on them. You know, close to post. But the number of games is what draws me to it. Like you know, a lot of people say how can you bet the NFL every week? You know you're getting down three to five bets a week, five to seven bets a week. I get that down and you know, for one of the slates of college football games and more, and I completely get that. So to me it would be like limiting yourself to. You know, a 12th, a 20th of college football is just you're just doing yourself a disservice. 

01:04:36 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
At that point I would say, yeah, I mean of course, but the variety there on college football, it's not even about like, oh, there's more things to choose from, it's just simple, like think of it logically everyone who's betting the more games that someone else has to price, the the less efficient than it's going to be if you have. That's why the super bowl, in theory, is the whatever people argue this. 

01:04:57
But super bowl world cup final, whatever those are going to be more efficient because, like you only have they have so many guys working on those lines. World cup, for example, there's only one game on. Usually there's two games on at a time max, but there's typically one game on, like they're they got their best guys focusing on that. It's getting the best handle. Obviously that's going to be the most efficient. So when you look at college basketball and there's literally a Saturday, saturday with like 150 games, of course it's not. There's gonna be mistakes and edges there. When you're looking at nfl, like yeah, you're betting for fun, if you're just recreational, because like especially sunday night, monday night, thursday night, football like live and stuff like that, like they're trading it legit, you're not gonna win that much but to bud's point, from like earlier as well. 

01:05:38 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Now look at all the early market movement too, in the nfl especially. It's not the same as it was even two years ago, where you could wait till wednesday and you had an edge. Now the openers come out and like they're beat up, 90 of them are beat into place immediately. It's it's almost like because there's all this focus. I think regulated sports betting did a lot of this right, like all this focus on the markets now, but it's basically a race to to get those early numbers and everyone's in tune to them and I don't blame people for it. But I think with college football at least, when you have that many games, um, you're able to get down a little bit more on openers in the sense that, okay, you can attack from a different perspective, maybe go to the bottom of the rotation number order instead of the top and work that way or whatever. 

01:06:22 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
But it totals first. Yeah, exactly, exactly right. Um, like so in our space of college football it always used to be uh, bol would drop them first, at fairly low limits. I think you could get like was it a thousand or two thousand on a side and 500 on a total on sunday and you get the 60 second rebet, which is, I think, for most pros certainly not enough to give away their position, right. But I think a lot of people started following that and then two years ago two or three now Circa became the first one to drop their college openers and they actually dropped, I think, size and totals on everything. 

01:06:58 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Pretty high limits too. Yeah, high limits yeah you could get out. 

01:07:01 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
I think it was like five dimes on sides, if I recall. I'm sure Benson will correct me on Twitter if I'm wrong on that, but decent stuff. So if you've got a buddy in Vegas you can, you know, or a couple of accounts, you can get down there. And then this year they actually got preempted a little bit on the bigger games. So like five, six hours in advance, lower limits obviously than what Circa's willing to take, unless you have a real, you know kind of account of DraftKings that your buddy just loses a lot in. But the market definitely changes based on who's dropping these openers. Yeah right, yeah for sure. 

01:07:40
You know, so it definitely has changed quite a bit and the Circa openers I found were sharper than what bol is done now circa takes a pop. 

01:07:49 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Now, bet online was never taken that much, and then I will say um, you know not to mix and match bet online is obviously, you know, unregulated. Offshore circa being regulated only in nevada right now is what the lines are talking about. But another thing I wanted to mention is that um, live betting being a big edge, as I, as we kind of both alluded to highest live betting limits for college are on pinnacle. It's presenting sponsor here. So um, sign up there, like most places, live betting. You're not going to get a pop on college football pinnacle though, especially, you know, when you're live, there's games where they will take live like 10k a click with rebet. So um, definitely sign up there if you haven't already. 

01:08:27 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
Obviously we mentioned sorry to cut you off bud no, I'm, I'm in the states, but obviously, uh, if you know, if you can, that's, it's a great spot. 

01:08:35 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I used to have pinnacle count uh back in the day before black monday for sure, well, I mean it's, it's, it's literally worth it for, uh, for guys, especially because you know if you're a guy like Bud who's betting early, beating all the lines, like you're going to get limited a lot of the recreational books. 

01:08:50
Nothing wrong with that, obviously, but you know, having circa openers come out pretty much like 10x the limit price of bet online is massive for any college football originators and bettors who want to actually get a nice pop down. And then if you can use like a circa a couple regulated recreational books and then a pinnacle, like you should be able to get your fill down for college football, which is awesome, yep. 

01:09:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
A hundred percent, Bud. You've been very grateful with your time. We ask the same question to every single one of our guests that we have on here. If you could go back five years and talk to a previous version of yourself, what advice would you give to your former self? 

01:09:32 - Bud Elliott (Guest)
So, yeah, I saw this on there and I was like I need to think about this and I just got caught up with other other stuff. I I would have probably left SB Nation before I did, or earlier than I actually did. You know I really didn't have a lot of faith in the high level management running that operation but I really valued working with the team that came up. You know Jason, kirk and Spencer and you know Holly and all those folks. So, career wise, probably should have left about a year or two earlier. Just would have been further on down the line. You know there are certainly some edges that, had I realized just how big they were, probably would have hit harder back in the day. I think that's the answer everybody should give, right. 

01:10:16 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I think so because I've lived through the same thing as you right. A couple episodes ago we had on a guy named Pisky who ran like a provincial lottery operation in Ontario here and made a killing doing so, and I knew about those edges while these guys were making a killing but I just never exploited it to the maximum. And I think when people have an edge, that's a pretty good piece of advice, like it could go away tomorrow. Yeah, and it probably will go away tomorrow maximum. And I think when people have an edge, that's a pretty good piece of advice, like it could go away tomorrow yeah, and it probably will go away tomorrow. 

01:10:48
I mean me and bud were betting at one point nba first to score stuff, yeah, and now that goes away after a couple months, right, well, they figured out who was doing the tip-off right yes, exactly, exactly. 

01:10:59 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
All right, so this has been uh, episode 85. You got bud elliott. Thank you so much for joining. We will see everybody next week.