RAS pro bettor joins VSIN's 'A Numbers Game'
Michael Craig, professional bettor, talked college football, RAS service with host Gill Alexander.
Professional bettor Michael Craig, RAS team member, joined Gill Alexander’s program, “A Numbers Game,” early Monday. The segment lasted about 10 minutes and the two discussed Mike’s career arc, college football preparation, and the RAS service—which is on sale now.
Audio/video to follow when it becomes available.
Transcript below.
Gill: Today, maybe one of my favorite people, if not my favorite person in sports betting through the years, and I think I speak on behalf of many who know him, Michael Craig, who is back with Right Angle Sports. Mike, how are you doing, man?
Mike: I’m doing great, thanks for having me on.
Gill: First of all, Michael, for those who are unfamiliar with you, can you give us just a few minutes on your journey. You were at Right Angle Sports, you were away, you came back, talk to us about that if you would.
Mike: I’ve been doing this a long time. I started with Ed at Right Angle in 2009. I worked there until January 2013. Then I moved on. I worked at Sports Insights for a few years, Dan Fabrizio, then I’ve been doing my own thing here for a while. I’ve been betting the whole time obviously. Then at Bet Bash 2 in Vegas, I got there on Friday, Ed messaged me. We had stayed in contact through the years, we may have talked once or twice a year, and I talked to (partner) Mike as well. Ed messaged to let me know they were downstairs watching the women’s Final Four, and he invited me down and we watched that, got to talking, hung out a lot throughout the weekend, and came to an agreement to work together again. So that’s how it all came about.
Gill: Beautiful. And what sports have you been betting all these years primarily?
Mike: Everything. But college hoops is the main thing, the main bread winner through the years for myself. It’s different every year. You have up years, down years, great years, and OK years and everything. Mostly for me, I originated college football and college basketball. I also had my hand in a lot of derivative markets in a lot of different sports, and then exchanging information with people in different sports too. A little bit of everything, really.
Gill: So will your primary focus moving forward be college football in the short term here with RAS?
Mike: Yeah, college football and college basketball. It’s never too early to start preparing for college basketball. You’ve got lines on 350 teams nowadays. It’s never too early for that. This is actually earlier, I had to start in on college football a little earlier than typical for myself, but yeah, it’s been good. It’s kept me on the ball a little more than I have been in the past when I only had to worry about myself.
Gill: Let me drill down on that, your general process. Because you said it’s a little earlier than normal. You know Dr. Bob a little bit, I’ve worked with him in the past. As you know, he’s full immersion into college football for his season long thoughts. He’s already starting in July. So many teams to analyze. When do you start with that? Just take us through your process on a week by week basis if you would.
Mike: For me, I like to get numbers together from last year. So last year’s power ratings from multiple different places. So, I make my own numbers—yards per play, success rate models, stuff like that. I make some models based on the market, closing lines and everything. And then I’ll look at maybe 10 or 15 power ratings, so I’ll make numbers out of all that. I use that as a basis. So you can say, ‘If these two teams played at the end of last year, this line would have closed approximately X,’ and then you can make some subjective adjustments once you research all the changes that happened in the offseason—with of course graduations and players leaving programs, new coaches, new coordinators, things like that. And then of course you have the transfer portal, which isn’t a new thing, but it’s bigger than ever, more changes than ever in terms of player movement in college football.
Gill: So when Week 1 lines, or Week 0, come out, maybe even some Games of the Year moving forward after that, how do you do it on a weekly basis? What’s the first thing you do when those numbers come out?
Mike: I’m just going to look at numbers. First thing I’ll do is look at the math numbers and how they changed from last year. And then, of course there’s projection systems and you can make numbers with that. You can look at whatever, Bill Connelly stuff, things like that. You can look at projection systems and see how numbers have changed from last year to this year. Figure out if that’s justified based on player movement, coaching movement, things like that.
Gill: Let’s talk about a certain game, let’s be more specific. How about Clemson-Georgia Tech. What was sort of the arc on a game like that.
Mike: For me, I look at that game, Clemson’s offense last year was down. And you see that, and everybody says, ‘Well, their quarterback sucked.’ And he wasn’t very good. But there were injuries, lots of personnel losses from the prior year, the offensive line was banged up, receivers were banged up all year long. The quarterback wasn’t good but that offense finished I think, rushing offense in the 50s, passing offense about 100, so overall their offense from an efficiency standpoint was probably in the 70s last year. But I look at that game, and I say, ‘end of last year, from a math perspective, I would have made this game -18 or -19.’ And they came out with the same line this year. It was -19 and it’s just moved up to -21. But that’s a game I had my eye on because the Clemson offense, prior years, they were almost always in the top 10, or even the top 5 probably. Last year, the quarterback played two games for Lawrence the prior year, had a really good game. I think the Clemson offense bounces back. It really can’t be worse than it was last year. So, the same number, then you have a Georgia Tech roster that loses four starters from the offensive line, new offensive coordinator, the Clemson defensive line is supposed to dominate. So I look at this game and say there’s a good chance Clemson is going to improve big time on offense. It’s -21 now, I would probably look to bet the first half here at less than -14 when those come out. I don’t know that there’s value left at -21, but lower than that, sure.
Gill: When do your priors fall off a cliff and you start to just use in season stuff?
Mike: Probably Week 5 or 6. About five games per team maybe.
Gill: Alright, we’ve got 60 seconds left, I’m putting you on the spot, Michael. Is there anything college football wise, season long, or maybe projecting ahead to college basketball if you want to go that way, a nice little tidbit that you think might be of help for bettors?
Mike: Well, let me talk about the RAS service a little bit here. One of the things Ed wants to do is make this more accessible to everybody. It’s kind of been a service that some people couldn’t use (due to price). So we’re doing a lot of free releases now, I know we’ll do a free release on your show at some point, we’ve done some stuff at Covers with Adam Chernoff, we’ve got the Betting Talk discord, so we want everybody to go there and maybe catch a release. We have a college football plus service this year that is going to be easier this year, it’s a game day thing, six plays for $95. I wanted to get that out there!