THURSDAY HUDDLE: Week 2

Let's turn some boring betting spreadsheets into fun betting action.

Sep 04, 2025

Hello paid subscribers, I’m assuming you haven’t missed me too much considering the Monday Film Study email arrived in your inbox just over [checks notes] 48 hours ago. The good news is that I’ve got some valuable information to share here in the first edition of the THURSDAY HUDDLE, where we get our heads together to figure out where we want to lay some action between now and the time Corso puts the headgear- ah, damn it, I made myself sad again.

Long story short, I’m going to bring you a summary of betting data and information from Monday until now in two main parts. The first is Line Movement - which games have had the largest shifts in spread and/or total between the time the betting markets opened and now (ish). The second is a new-look Lock Report, comprised of concise summaries of the betting content I listened to this week. I’ll include a little more detail on each of these since it’s our first edition of the season.

Disclaimer: NFA, DYOR, BOL. All lines/totals accurate as of whenever we happened to look them up.

LINE MOVEMENT

Sponsored by ChatGPT! I use the same WagerTalk odds board from the Monday Film Study to bring you an overview on where money is moving this week.

A note on using these numbers and a reminder of how oddsmaking works: the goal of the book is to try to ensure roughly equal action on both sides of a bet. One way to do that is to adjust the odds (you’ll see this in moneyline betting), the other is to change the actual number that you’re betting against.

This does not necessarily mean that an outcome is more or less likely to happen, or that there’s a glut of [exaggerated, sarcastic air quotes] “SHARP” money coming in on one side. However, you can view spread and total moves as a way for books to hedge their own risk profile.

Let’s take Bowling Green and Cincinnati, for example. The line opened at Cincinnati -18, and has “steamed” [industry term] up to Cincinnati -22.5. Oddsmakers are likely taking on a lot of Cincinnati money this week! Whether that’s sharp money or dumb money doesn’t really matter to me, I care about the fact that if I was holding a Cincinnati ticket at -18 on Monday, this movement shows me I got good “closing line value” on the bet. It’s extremely hard to beat the books, it’s virtually impossible if you’re getting zero or negative CLV on the majority of your bets.

I’m going to stop here and remind you that I’m not here to help you pay your mortgage by nibbling off closing line value a half point at a time - but, if you want to really enjoy and appreciate sports gambling (even if you don’t become a 15-monitor-desk, 25/8 day trader of it), it’s fun to know how these things work. I’m sure most of you know a lot of this, but if you don’t, keep an eye on it in your first couple bets this season. See how it feels.

TL;DR follow the numbers and how they move, and you might enjoy yourself more (and maybe win a few bets off CLV alone here or there).

📉 Top Spread Movers

Bowling Green vs Cincinnati – Open -18 → Consensus -22.5 (4.5-point move)
Tulsa vs New Mexico State – Open -1.5 → Consensus -4.5 (3-point move)
UL Monroe vs Alabama – Open -37.5 → Consensus -35 (2.5-point move)
Stanford vs BYU – Open -18.5 → Consensus -20.5 (2-point move)
Connecticut vs Syracuse – Open +8.5 → Consensus +6.5 (2-point move)
Utah State vs Texas A&M – Open +29.5 → Consensus +31.5 (2-point move)
San Diego State vs Washington State – Open -3 → Consensus -1.5 (1.5-point move)
Baylor vs SMU – Open +4 → Consensus +2.5 (1.5-point move)
Georgia Southern vs USC – Open -27.5 → Consensus -29 (1.5-point move)
Texas State vs UTSA – Open -5 → Consensus -3.5 (1.5-point move)

📊 Top Total (O/U) Movers

Georgia Southern vs USC – Open 64 → Consensus 60.5 (3.5-point move down)
Fresno State vs Oregon State – Open 48.5 → Consensus 45 (3.5-point move down)
Oklahoma State vs Oregon – Open 58.5 → Consensus 55.5 (3-point move down)
Bowling Green vs Cincinnati – Open 49.5 → Consensus 46.5 (3-point move down)
North Texas vs Western Michigan – Open 60 → Consensus 57 (3-point move down)
Miami Ohio vs Rutgers – Open 47.5 → Consensus 45 (2.5-point move down)
Kansas vs Missouri – Open 53.5 → Consensus 51 (2.5-point move down)
Florida International vs Penn State – Open 55 → Consensus 53 (2-point move down)
Baylor vs SMU – Open 65 → Consensus 63 (2-point move down)
Utah State vs Texas A&M – Open 55.5 → Consensus 54 (1.5-point move down)

LOCK REPORT

Last season, I introduced the Lock Report, where I combined all sorts of picks into one big spreadsheet and gave the picks a score. This year’s edition is going to be more pick-agnostic: my goal is to give you an at-a-glance summary of content you may have missed this week. These GPT-generated summaries are not guaranteed accurate, but I pull the transcript, run it through a use-case-specific GPT tool, and voila - a few hours of picks in 30 seconds of scrolling.

I’d love for you guys to let me know if there are any weekly pods you listen to that you want me to include in here! I’m going to flesh this out a little more soon with some additional functionality, but here’s the basic pass for Week 2 games.