Been keeping an eye on jhowell.net for on and off for a while now, but havent properly looking into his predictions till this season, and have to say that so far this season his predictions have been pretty good.
A word of caution, I havent taken into account Opening/Closing lines, just what the line was at whatever time of the week I happen to go through them and notde down the Spread/Total prices. Also I havent really been betting them, though I have had some success in the last couple of weeks in using them as a guideline to prompt me to look into certain games further and I have bet some of the underdogs that he predicts should be favourites successfully IF I like what I see when looking into the games further.
Having said that, if you were to follow completely blindly every spread that is more than 7pts different from the actual game line, then the results I have been tracking this season are as follows, running total in brackets from week 2 onwards:
In terms of a Moneyline bet, I have only tracked teams that it says are both 7 points off the actual line, and that are Underdogs and available at +Money, with results as follows, winning ML's in brackets:
I am happy to post the equivalent games from this week onwards, once I have gone through this weeks games - like I say I certainly dont advise blindly betting them, but from a personal point of view I have been quite happy with the nudges it has given me towards looking at certain underdogs a bit more closely.
Last edited by Maniac; 09-24-12 at 07:50 PM.
Reason: correction of spelling
Not sure about historical weeks either elsewhere, but I know that jhowell himself didnt actually keep historical records as I emailed him a couple years back to see if he could send me previous seasons worth of predictions so I could go through them in a bit more detail and his reply was that he didnt keep the historical projections.
i looked at prediction machine power rating based picks analysis for this week.
top picks visitors
ASU
SJSU
LT
Stanford
Baylor
Wisconsin
Cinn
i love those top 3 picks. after that i think i agree with all of them but more leans. not sure who baylor plays so i guess that's not a lean.
top picks home (doesn't seem to generate as much value. maybe too small HFA or road teams have done so well this year so far)
GA
NW
TAM
off-hand, not sure who any of those teams are playing altough i do remember liking NW and TAM as at least leans. would rather ride these 3 teams than play against.
Purely from the Howell lines, and with the same "7pts off the prediction" as above, this weeks games it likes are as follows:
Spreads
Hawaii +27.5 (vs BYU)
Oklahoma St +2.5 (vs Texas)
Northwestern -11 (vs Indiana)
Midd Tenn St +27.5 (vs Georgia Tech)
Marshall +16.5 (vs Purdue)
Arkansas St +2.5 (vs West Kentucky)
Texas San Antonio +1.5 (vs New Mexico St)
Totals
Oregon/Wash St Under 71.5
West Virginia/Baylor Under 80
Tex A&M/Arkansas Under 64.5
Florida Int/UL Lafayette Over 55
Moneylines
Oklahoma State +125 (vs Texas)
Arkansas State +125 (vs West Kentucky)
Texas San Antonio +100 (vs New Mexico St)
A few of the above lines are pretty close to the 7pts off basis I am using, and I havent yet gone through the games yet looking at them in more detail, but these are the ones that qualify for the "blind predictions"
anyone know anything about hawaii other than the fact they've been abysmal recently? norm chow? vaunted HFA gone for awhile now but i doubt they travel well...not sure BYU is high scoring so it might be ok anyway
i like NW.....
wanted to research MTSU a bit. know nothing of them this year.
.... marshall = very under the radar although their power rating hasn't improved. marshall and purdue both great over teams i think
ark st - wky = 2 teams i like to play......
i sense UTSA and Texas State are great value but they've played alot of FCS so far i think. and i think a few people are thinking they'll be great teams to back.
moneylines = no idea.
i see sagarrin prediction is #1 service on predictiontracker.com against the spread this year. like i said earlier i think the best/worst systems vary every year but i do find it intereesting
Having looked at the games further, I am not a fan of any of the above lines to be honest and havent bet any of those games - if had gotten Tex SA earlier in the week when they were still underdogs then that might have been the only one I would have bet...
i see howell around 50% this week. big picks and small picks.
sagarin was on fire again. 16-7 i think.
all the power ratings love hawaii i think, but that was one (and tulane) that people really might have overridden (i realize this type of thinking can justify anything but those teams have been so poor that those games would have jumped out.... FWIW, i liked hawaii but didn't play but i played tulane. NEVER AGAIN!! )
The totals have never seemed to be that much worth following, as with the exception of the 6-0 week, they have been losing - however the vast majority of selections it comes out with are Unders. Off the top of my head, I think there has only been 1 other Over that it has picked out this year, other than the one this week, and that one also won - so possibly it may be worth keeping an eye on that as well.
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