Notre Dame had a huge road win last weekend, and the Fighting Irish have certainly gotten everyone’s attention. After years of mediocrity, Notre Dame is certainly relevant again.

Take a look at the college football lines for this week and you’ll see Notre Dame is a 17 point favorite over Pitt? Can they cover? Here’s this week’s free pick from Vegas Vic:

3:30 Eastern (Saturday, November 3rd)
Pittsburgh +17 over Notre Dame
You have to figure the Irish are going to be somewhat flat in this situation if not totally flat in this situation as a double digit home favorite coming off of last weeks huge/satisfying national tv 30-13 upset road win at Oklahoma as a double digit road underdog crushing the Sooners. Lines do matter in perception. Who is the underdog and who is the favorite does matter in scheduling/situations/results. Pittsburgh is just good enough to give Notre Dame a fight and the Panthers are playing with double revenge having lost 17-23 and 12-15 the last 2 seasons vs Notre Dame. If the Irish show up flat in this situation off last weeks big win at Oklahoma they are going to be hard pressed to cover -17 points. If the Irish show up totally flat in this situation their 8-0 start ends with an outright Pittsburgh upset…

There you have it.

The NFL is finally back after college football kicked off last week and the Cowboys surprised a lot of people on Wednesday night, so it’s time to get geared up for Sunday’s full lineup of games.

We have a new NFL lines page where you can find lines from a variety of sportsbooks. We’ll also be getting free picks through the year from our friend Vegas Vic, and you can subscribe to Doc’s Sports Service for weekly picks.

The theme for week one is hype. If you’re going to have any success, you need to dig way deeper than the hype you hear over and over again from ESPN and most national pundits. If you only listen to them, you’re probably convinced that Russell Wilson is the second coming of Steve Young and that the Browns can’t win a game. Wilson may end up being good, but none of us have any idea based on a couple of preseason performances. Those stats matter very little, and frankly they don’t make him any taller or more accurate. Meanwhile, everyone is down on the Browns. The team is very young, so naturally they might struggle. But what if Trent Richardson really is healthy? What if Brandon Weeden’s arm looks as good as it did in the preseason? Despite all the hype, I still think Weeden will be a much better pro quarterback than Wilson.

The key to picking games is understanding uncertainty. Just about every pundit assumed Dallas couldn’t beat the Giants. Adam Schein said the Cowboys had “no chance” to win that game. That’s an absurd statement in today’s era of unpredictability in the NFL. You have to dig much deeper.

Cleveland is a 9.5 point underdog at home against Philadelphia. If you base your bets on ESPN power rankings, you’ll probably jump on Philly. But we really have no idea how good the Browns might be with those new players, so I would avoid that game.

Because week one is so hard to predict, I like teaser bets that go counter to the hype. So you can tease down the 7 points New Orleans in giving at home to Washington down to 1 point – essentially making this a pickem game. I Like RGIII, but he’s going on the road to face Drew Brees in his first game, and the Saints have a chip on their shoulder.

I would pair this up with Arizona getting 3 points at home against Seattle. The spread here has shifted from Arizona giving 3 points to getting 3 points, all due to the Russell Wilson hype and the drama surrounding the Arizona quarterback situation. You can tease this up so that Arizona is getting 9 points at home against a rookie quarterback drafted in the third round!

There are never any guarantees of course, and all of this is just for fun. I recommend getting input from professional handicappers as they have so much more information on these games. But the preseason hype offers up some opportunities, and you can usually do better going against the herd.