College Football Week 5 Best Bets: Composite Ratings Pick the Winners

The Composite nailed it in Week 4 with redemptive and profitable results.

Author:
Richard Johnson
Publish date:
Sep 29, 2021

The SI Composite struck back in Week 4. After a few hard-luck results, things broke right in a big way at seven games over .500. Early in the day, we were 10-5-1, and yes, it's simply a product of sequencing on the day's schedule, but that lead held as the Composite finished positive for the first time this season. The underlying numbers are phasing preseason projections out, so we're learning more about teams.

Conference play is here, which means more like-for-like matchups with a little bit less variance. For instance, backups playing in early season out of conference blowouts.

With that being said, the season is a marathon, and we're still not even halfway through, and variance comes for us all in the end.

Last week: 32-25-1 (56%)
Season: 96-106-3 (47.6%)

Composite Best Bets

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The process behind the picks is briefly explained in my Week 1 column. Most of the time, the computer spits out something within one or two points of the real line (and at that point, sharp plays and whale plays are what’s moving the line anyway). But if the computer gives something more than three points, it’s worth a second look.

Favorites

-BYU (-8) over Utah State
-Memphis (-11.5) over Temple
-Texas (-4.5) over TCU
-Appalachian State (-9.5) over Georgia State
-USC (-7) over Colorado
-Eastern Michigan (-1) over Northern Illinois
-Tulane (-3.5) over ECU
-UCF (-15.5) over Navy
-Florida (-8) over Kentucky
-Oklahoma (-10.5) over Kansas State
-Army (-5.5) over Ball State

Dogs

-Michigan (+1) over Wisconsin
-Syracuse (+5) over Florida State
-Troy (+7) over South Carolina
-Ole Miss (+14.5) over Alabama
-Boston College (+16) over Clemson