NCAAF teams
Will Harris, Special to ESPN.com 9y

Ten best Week 10 CFB ATS bets

College Football

The College Football Playoff committee has assured us that it will select the four "best" teams regardless of any other factor. But they haven't told us what that means. Polls are usually based on one of two things: What season-long resumes say teams deserve, or 'in-a-vacuum" relative strength. The latter is usually called a "power poll" to distinguish it from the former. The new ESPN Chalk Vegas rankings, for example, are explicitly defined as a power poll. The playoff rankings offer no such clarity.

To wit, the Nos. 3 and 4 teams in the committee's rankings will play each other this weekend when Auburn visits Oxford, Mississippi. The loser will drop below fifth-ranked Oregon (or sixth-ranked Alabama if Stanford beats Oregon), but how does a clash between two teams "better" than Oregon right now somehow affect the loser's status relative to a team weaker than both combatants? That logic suggests a resume test, but most of the rhetoric from the committee thus far suggests that the rankings are based on pure relative strength.

The ancient Greeks taught us that terms must be defined before any meaningful discussion can ensue. Is this a resume poll? A power poll? Something in between? That answer is what we should get from the committee. Until that happens, our advice is to ignore the football elections until we actually have a final four, kick back and enjoy the awesomeness of the best regular season in sports, and focus on the 10 championships actually decided on the field.

Last week's selections clocked in at 8-2 to move our record to 50-40 ATS on the year. This week, we back a bunch of road teams and explain why four of the nation's top five might go down. Here are the 10 best bets against the spread for Week 10:


TCU Horned Frogs (-5.5) at West Virginia Mountaineers

West Virginia's surging offense is no shock given veteran quarterbacking and Dana Holgorsen's pedigree. The defense, though, has been the surprise toast of the town. Newly promoted defensive coordinator Tony Gibson and 2014 addition Tom Bradley are indeed better fits than the departed Keith Patterson, but much like we pointed out last week in discussing Pittsburgh, context tells a different story than the impressive raw numbers. The Mountaineers' defensive resume is built on shutting down the sad-sack offenses of Towson and Kansas, plus an upset of a Baylor team that turned in the sloppiest, most self-destructive and unfocused performance of the Art Briles era.

The other five opponents on West Virginia's schedule? By their own standards, all of them had well-above average days against a Mountaineers defense that the overall season stats claim is suddenly a solid unit. Four defenses have held down each of Alabama, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma better than West Virginia's did;  five defenses had better days against Maryland, six against Texas Tech. Don't get fooled into thinking that West Virginia is some complete team ready to contend for anything beyond a minor bowl berth. This bunch is more likely to lose five straight to finish 2014 with a losing record than it is to win the Big 12 at any point in the Holgorsen era.

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