Fading State in NCAAF/NCAAB

Awhile back during college football season, some friends of mine observed the fact that NC State seems to consistently blow it in football and basketball and seemingly "underpeforms". (Also note that I wrote about this overall trend in the ACC of "Clemsoning".) We have a saying to explain this behavior: "State = State", which illustrates how the circular universe of NC State athletics seems to collapse upon itself year-after-year under the weight of unfounded expectations.

One way to gauge this is to see if "fading" (i.e. betting against) State against the spread would be a profitable exercise. I used Prediction Machine's Trend Machine to pull NC State's games against Division 1 opponents (non-FCS) in both college football and basketball over the past 5 years. They have amassed the following records against the spread (ATS) in each sport:

Football: 25-32, 43.86%
Basketball: 87-69, 55.77%

The breakeven win percentage needed to make money ATS is 52.38%, so fading State in football would actually be profitable. However, they have posted a rather robust 55.77% win rate ATS in basketball in recent years. So it looks like only football is applicable in this "fading State" strategy.