College Football Picks Week Three, Part One: Mitch’s Picks

There is no more surefire way for a Head Coach to come under scrutiny than to sit on a lead and end up losing.  I don't plan to come under that kind of scrutiny when it comes to my picks.

After Week Two, I am 29-17 against the spread and up 14 1/2 units in my posted and published picks, and I don't plan on letting up.  In fact, I'm planning on locking up a winning season by the time we're carving pumpkins and playing out the rest of the year and Bowl Season as icing on the cake.

While to many this may seem like a pipe dream, we're certainly headed in that direction, and if we can sidestep the disasters that are part of picking games against the spread, it certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility.

As we move closer to the conference schedule, and as the teams have a few games under their belt, things are sorting themselves out.  With this we'll lose some of the value plays we were able to muster up by doing some solid offseason homework and knowing who was on their way up and who might be a little overrated.

However, while many complain about the cupcake (sorry Ghost) scheduling, it leaves us with some spots where teams are untested and thus remain unknown to the general public.

When we looked at the calendar, this was one of the weekends we circled.  I do have a play this week for the USC-Ohio State game, but I'm saving it for later in the week.  Trust me, the wager is already in, as I didn't want to test the waters to see where the line is going to go.

Speaking of line moves, the lines are already moving like crazy, so let's get at least our usual lot of five picks in for Tuesday.

Cal -14 at Maryland (Saturday, Sept. 13, 12 EST): Three Units

For those who don't know this already, Maryland is really bad.  For those who don't know this, Cal is pretty good.  We'll get to the trends, of course, but let's just look at the actual field of play.

Maryland squeaked by Delaware, who in College Football is like the second place JV team less their best player, and lost outright to Middle Tennessee State at home in a game they were favored by 13 points in.  Cal beat a respectable Michigan State team by seven, covering at home, and then blew Washington State out of the building at Pullman, 66-3.

Is this mismatch too good to be true?  A Maryland cover would be one of the upsets of the year in my book.

After last week's disaster, Maryland is now 0-7 against the spread at home against non-conference opponents and 2-6 overall against the spread in their last eight games.  The Terrapins are also 1-7 against the spread in their last eight games in September and have only covered the spread one time in their last five games (1-4) when playing a team with a winning record.

For Cal, they are 7-1-1 against the spread in their last nine non-conference games, 7-2 against the spread in their last nine games in September, 6-0 against the spread after winning by more than 20 points, and 8-1 against the spread after scoring more than 40 points.

While all of these numbers are nice and supportive, I would have been on Cal anyway.  I am real down on Ralph Friedgen's Terrapins right now.

See the rest of Mitch's College Football picks for Week Three, Part One at The College Football Place