Looking for sharp sports betting action? This time of year, I transition into football futures mode as I am focused on preparing for the college football and NFL season.

Your curated list of tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.

College football win total - Eddie Walls is a professional sports bettor who harnesses an in depth understanding of all 138 FBS college football teams. On an episode of Right Angle Sports show, he talked about fading East Carolina this season.

East Carolina lost both coordinators to bigger programs, and they have massive turnover on the roster. QB Katlin Houser left for Illinois, and none of the secondary returns.

Eddie has East Carolina as an underdog in five games along with three other games as coin flips. Projecting them for six wins, Eddie likes East Carolina under 7.5 wins, -120. The market moves when Eddie talks, but you can grab -136 at DraftKings.

Evaluating wide receivers - In his 2026 fantasy football draft guide, JJ Zachariason wrote about first downs per route run as a metric to identify elite receivers. To thrive, a player must not only earn targets but also convert them into a success for the offense.

JJ identified 12% as a key threshold for first downs per route run and notes Washington WR Terry McLaurin cleared this threshold last season despite injuries that limited his routes. McLaurin now has a favorable offense with QB Jayden Daniels back and a mediocre set of receivers around him (3rd round pick Antonio Williams, Luke McCaffrey).

These insights are useful for season long receiving yards props as well as fantasy football. Check out JJ Zacharison's The Late-Round Draft Guide for all of his data driven NFL insights.

Then One Life - Chris Andrews, the director of South Point Sportsbook, is one of the most respected people in the sports betting world. People say that Chris has forgotten more about bookmaking than other people will ever know.

I loved his book Then One Day as he told hilarious stories from his life as a bettor and bookmaker. Chris is back with his latest book Then One Life with more stories.

Right now, the book is only available through Chris. He will also sell you one at Bet Bash.

United States men's national team - Now that the stench has worn off from the Belgium match, let's put the national team in perspective. Based on the predictive player valuations from Transfermarkt, the USMNT has steadily risen over the past decade. These metrics show that the USMNT is:

• As good as Switzerland.
• Not quite as good as a declining Belgium.
• Significantly better than Mexico.

Unfortunately, the Americans played their worst match against Belgium, a winnable match in which the opponents didn't start their three best attacking players.

I see the youth system up close. While pay-to-play system is a big problem, there are many talented players and some decent coaching. Most likely, the USMNT continues to rise over the next decade but never gets good enough to regularly make the quarterfinals and beyond of the World Cup.

World Cup humor - Almost two decades ago, Lionel Messi posed with a baby Lamine Yamal. After the final in which Spain thumped Argentina, AI updated that image.

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