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

The more I look at this week's games, the more I see I'm facing the scary prospect of relying on a lot of road teams.

While my analysis is always thorough, it usually just points to who the better team is and who should cover based on what we have to work with. And while it may not always point to who is going to actually win the game, that isn't really where we are concerned for our purposes; we want to cover the spread.

To complicate this further, every year it has become more apparent that the officiating isn't going to get any better, and it's only going to get worse, so we'll just have to live with it. The moral of the story: Just Cover, Baby.

East Carolina -13 at Tulane (Saturday 9/13/08, 3 EST) 1 Unit

I have been against East Carolina the past two weeks when they were prohibitive underdogs and I have paid for it in the form of four units total. This week I try and recoup a little of that as I'm on the Pirates. I am not fooled by the performance of Tulane last week against 'Bama and their sleepwalking offense.

While I'm tempted to plunk a larger wager on the Pirates, I know from experience that slow and steady truly wins the race, though the trends scream that this is time to go large.

Tulane is 4-12-1 against the spread in its last 17 home games and 5-17-1 against the spread in its conference. To make matters worse, the Green Wave are 6-18 against the spread when playing teams with a winning record and 3-7 against the spread following a cover.

East Carolina's trends are very strong in its favor. The Pirates are 22-8 against the spread in their last 30, 20-8 against the spread in their last 28 conference games, 11-2 against the spread when playing teams with a losing record, and 4-1 against the spread in their last five road games. There is also plenty more on both sides where that came from. I'm with Skip Holtz's club this week.

Iowa State +13 1/2 at Iowa (Saturday 9/13/08, 12 EST) 1 Unit

I have been less than impressed with the Hawkeyes the past few years and have wondered if Kirk Ferentz has had any regrets not taking all of those NFL offers he had on the table just a few years back.

For Iowa State, I'm not so sure Gene Chizik made such a smart move leaving his cushy defensive coordinator job at Texas and taking the Cyclones job before last season; maybe he could have waited for a better spot. While I normally see Iowa State on the wrong end of some spectacular highlight videos I like them in this this weekend.

While the Hawkeyes are an impressive 36-16 against the spread in their last 52 at home, they are just 1-4 against the spread in their last five after covering the spread. Iowa State is 5-1 against the spread in its last six overall and 9-1 against the spread in its last 10 against the Big Ten, but just 2-6 against the spread in its last eight on the road.

The real reason I'm on Iowa State, though, is it has dominated this series of late in relation to the number, going 5-0 in the last five meetings at Iowa and 4-0 in the last four in this series overall.

See eight more picks from Mitch for today's installment (that's 15 total so far this week) at The College Football Place.