NewEra2023 said:
Winning that game would be big and should be celebrated. But who cares what Vegas has us after that. Since when have we lived up to favorable odds?
When there's positivity and hype around us the players and/or staff never handle it well.
Game 1 would be great but remember Florida beat Utah and look what happened.
I'll have cigar night if we're 5-0 going into 11am Mizzou and one if we're 9-1 going into Jordan-Hare.
Actually, it's pretty much dead on over the years on the whole. It's usually our fans odds set on texags we fall short of. Usually vegas is within a game and damn close almost every year. 2022 being the obvious major exception that we greatly underachieved in. We have underachieved by 1.5 games or more 3 times in 12 years. After a ND win, we would likely be at 9.5, meaning we'd have to underachieve by 1.5 games from that point forward. Even for our disappointing program, that would be a bigger disappointing close to a season than normal from that point forward.
2012 o/u 7.5 - actual 10
2013 o/u 9.5 - actual 8
2014 o/u 7.5 - actual 7
2015 o/u 7.5 - actual 7
2016 o/u 6 - actual 8
2017 o/u 7 - actual 7
2018 o/u 7 - actual 8
2019 o/u 8 - actual 7
2020 o/u 7 actual 8
2021 o/u 9.5 - actual 8
2022 o/u 9.5 - actual 5 (the big outlier)
2023 o/u 8 - actual 7
Take out the biggest two outliers, one good and one bad (2012 and 2022) it's literally 84.5:85 in terms of wins predicted versus actual wins over 10 seasons.
Jimbo was a huge underachiever, but Sumlin actually overachieved on the whole (based on vegas win totals, granted some of that was his blundering down the stretch to finish the previous year). Vegas still hit it's mark overall. Is Elko more likely to overachieve or underachieve? I don't know, but if he beats ND, I think 8-4 is just not a prediction mired in reality at that given moment.