I have an opinion about the city of Champaign, Illinois. I used to travel there for business periodically. That opinion is not positive.

Champaign is my least favorite Big Ten college town, and I spent four years in West Lafayette. For fans, it is virtually impossible to get there in any reasonable amount of time. The options from southeast Michigan include two flights, one of which might involve a plane with propellers, one flight to Chicago or Indianapolis followed by at least a two-hour drive, or a six-hour drive, much of it over the flattest, most boring Midwestern scenery imaginable.

Once one arrives in Champaign, I will admit that the University of Illinois has a lovely campus, but there is not much else. A quick search for decent restaurants in the area on OpenTable results in three Red Lobster locations in the top-six, two of which are literally in different cities an hour away. I am sadly not joking.

With this in mind, I can somewhat understand why the Michigan State Spartans were flat and uninspired in Saturday’s 38-16 drubbing at the hands of the Fighting Illini. But that does not make it any less disappointing.

The Fighting Illini are a well-coached, square and solid team, but they are far from spectacular. This is a game that was winnable, and a win would have set the Spartans up for a very positive run to close the season. Instead, Michigan State is now on the brink of missing the postseason for the third year in a row, with no remaining margin for error.

Circling back to the analysis of the schedule from back in August, we knew that the middle portion of the schedule was going to be challenging, but that there would be opportunities in the final two games. My concern back then was that the mid-season gauntlet would take both a mental and physical toll on the team as the end of the season grew closer.

Based on what we saw on Saturday afternoon, I fear that this toll was just as bad as fans feared. The Spartans' offense is increasingly one-dimensional, the line play continues to be inconsistent on both sides of the ball, and the banged-up defense is now struggling to get off the field on third down, even against mediocre offenses.

It is still possible for the Spartans to get off the mat and get back on a line to a bowl invitation. They need to circle the wagons and square away the issues that cropped up against the Illini. That needs to be the point of the final two weeks of the season, or the season will feel like a flat-out disappointment.

Now let's check in on the picks that I made in last week's Bad Betting Advice article, starting with the overview summary shown below in Figure 1.

More information about how to read this figure can be found in Week One's edition of Against All Odds.

This week, eight teams overachieved by beating the spread by more than 14 points, including Memphis, Colorado, Tulane, Arizona and Illinois. No teams underachieved, yet still won.

There were a total of 13 upsets in Week 12, which squares exactly what my weekly simulation predicted (12.9). Table 1 below summarizes those upsets and compares them to the picks made last week.

This week's biggest upset based on the opening spread was Stanford's win over Louisville (-19.5). By my count, this is the fifth-largest upset of the season to date. Other notable upsets include Arizona State over Kansas State (-9), Florida over LSU (-5), Rutgers over Maryland (-4.5), and Kansas over BYU (-3.5).

My computer went just 1-2 (33%) on upset picks, which brings the year-to-date performance to 37-45 (45%). The FPI did slightly worse, going 1-3 (25%) which brings the year-to-date total up to 24-25 (49%).

Table 2 below gives the results of the computers' picks against the opening spread.

The only pick on the board this week was from my computer, and it was wrong. Overall, my algorithm went 28-25 (53%). This brings the year-to-date performances to 30-31 (49%) for suggested bets and 316-295 (52%) overall.

The full set of FPI picks went just 22-31 (42%). This brings the year-to-date performance for the FPI to 22-16 (58%) for suggested bets and 319-293 (52%) overall.

Table 3 below gives the results of the point total bets for Week 12.

My point-total (over/under) picks all fell totally flat. All four picks were wrong. This brings the year-to-date totals to 19-20 (49%) for the locks, but 92-64 (59%) for the suggested bets.

Following the results of Week 12, I have re-run the full season Monte Carlo simulation using the updated power rankings, including the current uncertainty in those rankings, which provides the opportunity to update the season odds for each team. Table 4 below gives the update for the Big Ten conference and Table 5 shows the updated Big Ten win distribution matrix.

Note that all the rankings listed next to each team refer to my computer's power rankings and not the national polls.