Nothing cleared my number this morning. I'd rather hand you that in the first sentence than dress up an empty board for 500 words, so let's be clear about what CFB best bets today looks like from my desk in the back half of August: a notebook, a couple of wire items, and a pile of numbers I am still building by hand.

The loudest item involving a program right now is not a football item at all. The reporting out of Boulder says the county sheriff's office confirmed Colorado's staff was working to help coordinate access so Deion Sanders could testify at his son Shilo's bankruptcy trial. That is a family in a courtroom on what has to be a miserable week. I am not pricing it, I am not building an angle on it, and anyone who tells you they know what a head coach's court appearance does to a football team is selling something. What I actually track in a week like that is boring and useful: who is running with the ones, who is doing media, whether the daily football rhythm changes at all. Practice reports move my numbers. Docket entries do not.

What I'm eyeing in CFB right now

  1. Colorado's football information, not Boulder's court calendar. The spot is the Buffaloes' opener, whenever their next meeting lands. What would turn it into anything: real participation news from the practice field. Until then it is noise wearing a headline's clothes.
  2. The bottom of the sport. The annual Bottom 10 is back on the wire, and I read it every year as a market document, not a comedy bit. The Minutemen have been regulars in that column for years, and teams like that draw the least attention per dollar on the board. Least attention is where lazy numbers live. What turns it into a play: a total that has not caught up to a new coordinator, a new tempo, or a completely rebuilt two-deep.
  3. Opener totals with new play-callers. August prices lean on last year's tape because that is all anyone has. When a staff changed and the pace changes with it, the number is describing a team that no longer exists. What turns it into a play: a coordinator with a documented tempo history landing at a program that crawled last fall.
  4. Preseason win totals as a scouting exercise. I build my own season projections first, then look at what the market thinks. Right now I am still in the building phase, so there is nothing to report. That is not coyness. It is just the calendar.

The one I lean on most

Bottom-tier opener totals. Not a play, a lean, and I want to be precise about the difference: a lean means my model and my gut agree on a direction, and a play means a real number showed up on my screen and paid me to take it. The first is a feeling with homework attached. The second has a price. Checked the almanac, and the sport's best reminder is still Appalachian State walking into Michigan Stadium in 2007 and winning, which is what September does to everyone's summer certainty.

So: empty board, honest column. When something clears, it will show up here with the mechanism attached and the number named. Keep it entertainment, keep it 21+ where it's legal, and if you want to argue with my read on the bottom of the sport, you know where to find me.

What I'm watching next: practice participation out of Boulder and the first real opener totals to hit the market.