What Vegas Thinks: Big swing in USC-Vandy line; odds on next USC football coach
David Purdum of ESPN Chalk joined us this week to talk about Steve Spurrier’s departure from South Carolina and the Gamecocks’ game against Vanderbilt.
“He’s been very, very good to bettors through the years,” Purdum said. “Overall, betting on Steve Spurrier for his career has been a successful proposition.”
We’d be remiss jumping right into Vanderbilt, so let’s talk about Steve Spurrier and his legacy from a gaming standpoint.
He has been a great bet over the years. You go back to Florida and his comments about how he likes to cover the spread for the alumni. He is one of the coaches who is aware that betting is going on and doesn’t just pretend like it’s not. For his career, I have him at 164-137 with several pushes there. That’s about 54.7 percent, and that’s good. He’s got the second most covers of any active coach right now behind only Frank Beamer of Virginia Tech. He’s been very, very good to bettors through the years. Overall, betting on Steve Spurrier for his career has been a successful proposition.
The line against Vanderbilt actually went down after Spurrier’s resignation. What’s your take on that?
It opened at the Wynn at 7 on Sunday (in favor of South Carolina) before all the news broke. It’s down to 3. That’s a significant move. I was surprised that it has gone down that much. I looked into it, like, ‘What am I missing here? Why has this gone down so much?’ But one thing I can tell you about Vanderbilt in their last 30 SEC games, they are 20-10 against the spread. They are down but they are getting too many points a lot of the time. I guess that’s something people are looking at that Vanderbilt has produced some winning numbers against the points this year. Four points for a coaching change seems like a lot. Maybe this number was going to come down regardless of the Spurrier news. Maybe it just opened up a little bit too high.
On the coaching issue, as soon as Spurrier left we started seeing odds for the who the next coach would be. Are those actual lines that you can bet or is that just a gimmick?
Both. You’ll be able to maybe bet $50, maybe $100, at some of these offshore books that put it up. You see a lot of names. Kyle Whittingham is currently the favorite at plus-350, the Utah coach. You have Chip Kelly who has odds. Tom Herman, the former Ohio State offensive coordinator. Justin Fuente, who is at Memphis now. The things with those lines is those odds makers don’t have any inside information. They don’t. They put these up for more than anything publicity. They will keep their limits low just to protect themselves, but they throw them out there and get us talking about it like this. That is their form of advertising. The offshore sports books are not allowed to advertise on a lot of the mainstream media sites, so this how they go about it.
Now for my “lock of the week.” Do you have any tips this week on numbers that you like?
We mentioned Fuente at Memphis. They are quite good. They have won 10 or 12 in a row and have been very good against the spread, a high-scoring team. They are getting double digits against Mississippi. It’s one of those games where you step out of SEC play hoping for a softie and boy this isn’t a softie so I kind of like Memphis there getting double digits in points. I think they can score a lot and turn this into a shootout with Ole Miss and stay within those 10 points.
This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 12:48 PM with the headline "What Vegas Thinks: Big swing in USC-Vandy line; odds on next USC football coach."