I have the same feelings; pinch does nothing but make all of the blockers look inside but not block anyone. If you want to run straight up the middle then spread seems to work the best. For runs where I want to run on to the outside of the tackles (i.e. the LT) or seal off the DE then calling a line-shift to the right seems to work.
...but just like LB stated, sometimes it works beautifully and sometimes it blows up in your face. I have a hard time with counters sometimes but the power-O run actually seems to do pretty well for me; I just have to go a bit slowly where the play is designed then shoot the hole rather than try to bust it to the outside.
For my running game, I've had to really handicap myself b/c I can get 4-5 ypc pretty easily...of course I use the right stick to juke a lot so that is very influential as well.