How to read Our lean
It names the side our number points to and the
line that side has to beat: the best number any of the five books offers on that side, or DraftKings’ via ESPN when no book has posted the
game yet. "UCF +10.5" means our number expects UCF to lose by fewer than 10.5 points, or to win. When our spread and that
line are within 1.5 points of each other it says No lean. A lean is what our number says, not a
recommendation to bet it.
Locks: open, day before, hour before
Each game's lean is frozen three
times and never changed after: Open is the first DraftKings line we captured for the game,
Day before is the capture closest to 24 hours before kickoff, and Hour before the
capture closest to 1 hour before. Every lock is measured against that DraftKings capture, which is the one line we have
saved hourly, so a locked lean can differ from the Gap beside it, which compares with the best book number as of this
build. The day-before lock is the lean we stand by, so it is the one on each card. Until it
is taken the card shows the lean as of this build, against the best book number, and says it is not locked. Lock times are Eastern. Locks taken
before 5 October 2026 were rebuilt from our saved hourly line captures, using the model that was on this board at the
time.
What the gap measures
Gap is our spread minus
the best number any of the five books offers on our side, counted in home-team points: a plus number leans to the home team and a minus number to
the away team. In short, the gap compares our line with the best number any of the five books offers on our side. When no book has posted a game yet, it is measured against DraftKings’ spread via ESPN instead, and
the card says so. Each card prints its size and the team it points toward, and our lean says the same thing in words.
Where the projected scores come from
The margin is ours; the total is the
market's. We built a totals model and it graded worse than always predicting the league average: MAE 13.43
against 13.24 on 762 walk-forward games, and a sweep across five ridge values and two half-lives put every single
combination above that baseline. College scoring is too noisy and team scoring rates carry too weakly. So the
market's total is the better number, and splitting it with our margin is what produces these two scores.
23 of the 63 games on this slate carry one; the rest have no posted total, so no projected score is shown.
Win percentages and the moneyline
Every win percentage on a card is the
home team's chance of winning, so they read straight across. The away side is one minus each.
DK's moneyline is shown as posted, away then home. Its percentage is de-vigged: a two-way market's
implied probabilities add up to more than 100%, and that excess is the book's fee rather than its opinion.
Normalising to 100% is what makes the book's column mean the same thing as ours. 23 of the 63 games have a
posted moneyline; the rest are lopsided enough that the book leaves them off the board.
Books: the best number
The Books column shows the best number any of the five books offers on the side we lean to, with the book named and its price: DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars and Fanatics. Best means the most points when taking points and the fewest when laying them, and when books tie on the number the better price wins. For the totals, the best over is the lowest total and the best under is the highest. Where we do not lean, or sit on the books, it shows the best number for the home side. Open “All books” to see every book, DraftKings included, as quoted. Prices move between refreshes. When no book has posted a game yet, the column falls back to DraftKings’ spread via ESPN and says so.
Odds from The Odds APIWhat is behind the numbers
Ridge-regularised Massey ratings fitted on
9,246 games through the current season, covering 411 teams. Home field 3.2 points, residual sigma
15.1. Win probability is the normal CDF of the projected margin over that sigma.