Pittsburgh Panthers Handicapping Review

 

By Tom Wilkinson

 

The 2004 Pittsburgh Panthers had, in reality, two distinctly different football seasons and provided sports bettors an excellent example of the pitfalls to reactive, or shall we say OVERREACTIVE, sports handicapping.

After an expected 24-3 win and cover against the sorts betting odds as 17.5-point home chalks against Ohio, Pitt was to host a struggling Nebraska program going under a MAJOR transition with new coach Bill Callahan. Many online sports betting blogs were touting a Pitt rout but Nebraska shocked many observers with a 24-17 win as 4.5-point dogs. Many pockets and bankrolls were burned and after Pitt barely got past 1-AA Furman 41-38 in a game that was not on the sports betting odds board, they were starting to catch considerable ire at online sports betting blogs. Pitt next was badly beaten at Connecticut 17-29 as 6.5-point dogs and at this point, was written off by many in the sports handicapping community. The Panthers hardly established any credibility in their next game when they barely won at Temple 27-22 as 12-point chalks against an Owl team that was being kicked out of the Big East for not being competitive enough, (quite an insult, if you think much about Big East football).

At this stage Pitt was 3-2 straight up and 1-3 against the odds and the last two of those three wins were hardly earth shattering or impressive in the least. Big East Conference leader and favorite Boston College was to come calling next and Pitt all of a sudden found themselves as 8.5-point home dogs and completely written off as a conference championship contender. Beyond all of that head coach Walt Harris’ agent ran his mouth all week leading up to the BC game about how Harris was getting screwed by the Pitt administration and would have to leave after the season. Online sports betting blogs started appearing with “lock” selections on BC. Then a strange thing happened. Pitt blindsided the college football community with a 20-17 win, which served as a springboard to a 5-1 stretch run both straight up and against the spread and, incredibly enough, the Big East championship and Bowl Championship Series berth in the Fiesta Bowl, which they lost to Utah 7-35 as Harris was a lame duck headed to Stanford by that time.

2004 Pitt offered a valuable sports handicapping lesson to those who base football picks on “conventional wisdom” and reactive styles of analyzing games against the odds.