Anatomy Of Midweek College Football

With the increase in popularity of college football, the sport has expanded its weekly schedule from strictly Saturday games to moving games to as early as Tuesday. The Thursday night showdown, however, offers some of the most exciting games of the year.

Meanwhile, every week I predict the final score for games involving Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams. Normally, I am able to pick the games at about a 95 percent accuracy rate. When it comes to Thursday night games, however, I am at 40 percent for 2007-08.

The purpose of this article is to outline the history of the Thursday night showcase and determine trends that occur from the results of those games. Also, I hope my article can aid others and myself in predicting these nightmares more accurately.

The following paragraphs analyze each Thursday night game dating back to last season that involve ranked teams or a game between BCS conference opponents.

In Week 4, the Miami Hurricanes hosted No. 20 Texas A&M. I wasn’t convinced that Miami was good enough to hold off the road ranked opponent and I picked the Aggies as a result. But the Hurricanes proved me wrong and beat A&M persuasively, 34-17.

Two weeks later, the No. 8 Kentucky Wildcats visited No. 11 South Carolina. I felt nothing could go wrong for Kentucky during their dream season, but I was proven wrong once again. The Gamecocks beat the Wildcats with ease, 38-23.

Just one week later, unranked Wake Forest welcomed visiting No. 21 Florida State. Like the Miami-Texas A&M game, this contest featured an unranked team at home facing a ranked opponent. For some reason, however, I still was unable to go against the favorite. The Demon Deacons knocked off the Seminoles, 24-21.

The following Thursday, the No. 2 South Florida Bulls squared off against an underachieving Rutgers team. Similar to Kentucky, I liked how South Florida’s season was progressing and picked them to win despite being on the road. Unfortunately, the Scarlet Knights played well and came away with a 30-27 win.

Again the next week, the No. 2 team in the country played a Thursday night game on the road. This time, the Boston College Eagles traveled to Blacksburg to play No. 8 Virginia Tech. I was wary of South Florida’s loss the week before, and so I chose the Hokies to win.

Trailing 10-0 nearly the whole game, Boston College appeared to face the same fate as the Bulls one week prior. However, quarterback Matt Ryan and the Eagles stormed back to snatch a 14-10 win, giving me five incorrect predictions on Thursday night in five tries.

Two Thursdays from then, the No. 7 West Virginia Mountaineers hosted unranked Louisville. I picked West Virginia, which looked to be wise when the Mountaineers led 31-17 midway through the third quarter.

However, the Cardinals rallied to tie the game with two minutes left in the contest. But Pat White scored a late touchdown to seal the win, which was my first correct prediction of the season.

The following Thursday matched yet another No. 2 team on the road against an unranked host team. In this case, the Oregon Ducks headed to the desert to take on the Arizona Wildcats.

After realizing that previous No. 2 teams were struggling mightily on the road, I predicted the Wildcats to take down Oregon. And sure enough, Arizona came through and my win total stood at two.

The next Thursday featured another Pac-10 showdown. No. 11 USC had a date with No. 6 Arizona State with the conference championship on the line.

I am one that never picks against the Trojans. Thankfully, that strategy proved valuable as USC took care of business, winning 44-24 in convincing fashion.

Next week, the game featured two teams that had played on Thursday night earlier in the season. In this case, unranked Rutgers played at Louisville in a matchup between programs who expected to do better than what they did.

I picked the Cardinals and from the start, Rutgers played like they knew I went against them. The Scarlet Knights held an 11-point lead heading into the fourth quarter, but Louisville rallied and won 41-38.

For the 2007 regular season, my record stood at a disappointing 4-5. Heading into the 2008 campaign, I hoped to find better success, but I am doing even worse than last year.

The college football midweek schedule expanded and as a result, my picks now include both Wednesday and Friday nights. Nonetheless, changing the day of the week has done me no good. Check out my misfortunes thus far for 2008.

The first Thursday of the season matched the No. 24 Wake Forest Demon Deacons against host Baylor. Wake had never won in the state of Texas and being so troubled with midweek picks like I am, I went with the improved Bears to upset the visitors. The Demon Deacons blew out Baylor 41-13, and my struggles continued.

The following Thursday featured the first conference matchup of the season. The game matched SEC foes South Carolina and Vanderbilt.

The Gamecocks were ranked No. 24 and traveled to Nashville looking for their second win of the season and first in conference. I picked them to win but yet again, my struggles continued as the Commodores knocked off South Carolina.

In Week 3, the North Carolina Tar Heels visited the Rutgers Scarlet Knights on Thursday. The caliber of Carolina was unknown to me and I showed my ignorance by picking Rutgers. I couldn’t have been more wrong; the Tar Heels beat Rutgers in a rout, 44-12.

The next night, the No. 13 Kansas Jayhawks were in Tampa for a showdown against No. 19 South Florida. I went with the Bulls to top Kansas. My pick was correct as South Florida pulled off an impressive comeback, giving the Jayhawks their first loss on the young season.

Week 4 presented three challenges: Kansas State at Louisville, No. 17 West Virginia at Colorado, and Connecticut at Baylor. In short, here are my predictions for these games. Kansas State 29, Louisville 12.... West Virginia 58, Colorado 17.... Connecticut 38, Baylor 6. The results? I was 1-2 and the game I won was nowhere near the score I predicted.

The following week, No. 1 USC traveled to Corvallis to face the unranked Oregon State Beavers. As stated earlier, I never pick against the Trojans, but this week I truly showed my ignorance by predicting them to win 52-3. Oregon State pulled off the upset and won 27-20.

I also lost my Friday night game when Connecticut beat Louisville, and my record fell to 2-7 in midweek games in 2008.

In Week 6, the Pittsburgh Panthers went on the road to face No. 10 South Florida. Based on the fact that Pitt lost to Bowling Green in Week 1 at home and South Florida beat Kansas at home a couple weeks later, I thought the Bulls couldn’t lose. But sure enough, Pitt came into Tampa and won 26-21.

The same night, Oregon State played Utah following their upset of No. 1 USC exactly one week ago. I picked the Beavers to win, but they blew an eight-point lead in the final minute and lost by three. My record stands at 2-9 for 2008 and 6-14 overall.

After reviewing of all of these games, you should wonder what to take from my analysis. Well, I can tell you that in midweek games, expect the unexpected. Anything can happen, and anything that should happen probably won’t.

Finally, when predicting midweek games, consider the following: (1) Expected blowouts never happen, (2) unranked home teams either win or give the favorite a scare, and (3) ranked home teams tend to slip against an optimistic underdog. These guidelines should give you some help when picking midweek games, even though I need it most.

Regardless if you pick winners for college football or bet on certain teams, I encourage you to watch midweek games, because they offer excitement not usually seen on Saturdays. And if you have any tips for me, I would love to hear from you.