By JohnnyTouchdown
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September 15, 2019
Two of the biggest shockers of week 3 of college football weren't shocking at all, if you knew what to look for, which is why Best Bets US customers cruised to dominating wins in our Friday night and Saturday morning NCAA picks . The official story is that Kansas' rout of Boston College was a stunner, and it's easy to see how people could think about this after a strong BC start and, most importantly, a hapless Kansas team looking even more hapless than hapless Kansas team's usually look -- I mean, this was a team that appeared to have no hap whatsoever. While they didn't have hap, though, they did have a hat: The Hat, to be exact. Les Miles was a huge pick-up for Kansas. Much maligned, much mocked, sure, but there aren't too many college football coaches in the present day with universally known nicknames. You pretty much have to accomplish some big things to get that level of recognition, and Les Miles has done some big things. So if you didn't expect some big wins for Kansas in his first year, you were fooling yourself, and if you didn't expect them to start happening in game 3, you don't know much about how old hands like Miles shape young minds. First, young minds are naturally resistant to shaping, especially to shaping from old hands. Young players usually have to hit rock bottom before they become malleable enough for a new coach to start shaping them into winners, and Kansas, and while the argument could be made that Kansas has hit rock bottom in just about every game since Mark Mangino was forced out, losing to Coastal Carolina at home in week 2 was perhaps the rockiest and most bottomly rock bottom yet. Historically, week 2 is when teams in this situation do hit that rock bottom, and historically, week 3 is prime for such teams to make a turnaround. So the Jayhawks' stunner over BC wasn't really a stunner at all: it was right on schedule. West Virginia's new coach, Neal Brown, doesn't have the same kind of recognition as Miles, but he, too, is an old hand with impressive accomplishments under his belt. And these proud Mountaineers, like Miles' Jayhawks, also hit rock bottom in week 2. The writing was on the wall for their demolition of a NC State team that had looked lights-out while feasting on cupcakes through the first two weeks. Did you see the writing on the wall? We did, and our customers made out like bandits, shaping piles of cash with their old hands. In different, but also completely unsurprising news, our Thursday night NFL pick of the Bucs paid easily, as did our Saturday night Oklahoma play. Honestly, who was taking Carolina and UCLA in those games? Somebody must have, but not our customers. To be fair, we did have a swing and miss taking USC over BYU in our Saturday afternoon pick, but also to be fair, nobody's complaining about going 4-1 so far this week. And to be even fairer, our Cash and a Half Guarantee helped soothe the wounds from that USC game, as we paid $75 back to customers who bought the $50 pick.