I had to google "sharp money" to understand this post. Learning what that means, I gotta ask: IF professional or highly successful bettors bet at >10, then why would the line move down? I'm not following at all. Care to enlighten one ignorant of this betting science?
Because they don’t want more sharp action piling in on it. The fact that they bought it at 10 ot more tells you they think it’s mispriced.
So you move it down now to get all the casual bettors that follow and see OSU as less than 10 points as “easy money” and they come pouring in thinking it’s a bargain.
Lines are all about the books having a “real number” and then using market psychology to get action moving. Balanced action if possible but unbalanced if they think they are getting the best of it.
This line move looks like the books real number told them OSU by 11-14. So they hung it out there just short of 14 to see what the market does and the guys they pay attention to snapped it up hard enough til they dropped it through 10 (a key number in football betting). They kept dropping it to get the right spot where casual money started buying tickets heavy enough to balance the action.
Just a guess of course and it doesn’t mean sharps are always right but, more than likely, someone who does this for a living thought UW by more than 10 was a smart bet. Likewise, this might mean that a whole bunch of average joe bettors bought in thinking OSU laying less than 10 is a good bet.
We shall see
