College Football Betting for September 16, 2016
Busy weekend of sports–the baseball playoff races are heating up and we’ve got a full card of NFL and college football action. The college football weekend starts with three games on Friday night. Our top play is in the top game on the board:
COLLEGE FOOTBALL FOR SEPTEMBER 16, 2016:
BAYLOR AT RICE:
Maybe Rice *is* that bad. I played Rice plus the points against Army last week only to watch the non-competitive Owls lose 31-14 giving up 348 yards rushing in the process. The most exciting part of the game was when the Army mascot–a mule–delayed the game by ‘dropping a deuce’ in the endzone. Other than that, it was just the Army option running over, around and through the Rice defense. Based on the awful effort of the Rice defense so far allowing over 1000 yards of total offense and 77 points in their first two games this season could get ugly. It does underscore a valuable handicapping lesson about interpreting the ‘returning starters’ numbers. On balance, you want to play *on* teams with a lot of returning starters early in the year. They know the system, know their teammates and know the opposition. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t matter how many starters a team is returning. Rice, for example, returned 9 starters on defense but is that really a good thing when the Owls’ defense was #102 in total offense and #108 in points allowed per game in 2015?
Baylor is 2-0 SU/0-2 ATS after two games against overmatched opponents–FCS entry Northwestern State and perinneally hapless LSU. Not that the Bears’ offense didn’t look good in these games. Baylor beat Northwestern State 55-7 and held the Demons to 9 first downs, 47 yards rushing and 31 yards passing. Ouch. Baylor just missed the cover as -50.5 point favorites. They allowed a few more yards to SMU but that’s not a big deal when you force four turnovers. Bears won that game 40-13 failing to cover as a -34.5 point favorite. The mainstream sports media is making a big deal over the fact that the Bears’ offense looked awful in the first half and went to the locker room tied 6-6 with SMU. Some of that credit belongs to SMU who were very aggressive defensively in the first half but you can’t dismiss the best offense in college football during recent years due to one bad half.
And don’t expect those struggles to continue this week against the Owls. In fact, this could be the ugliest scoreline yet in what looks to be a miserable season for Rice. Their defense was ripped to shreds by Western Kentucky and Army–two decent offenses but two very predictable offenses. Everyone knew that WKU would look to pass and Army would look to establish the run. Baylor is scary since they can do both. So far this season the Bears have rushed for 550 yards and passed for 484 yards. 7 passing touchdowns and 4 rushing touchdowns.
Baylor also has no problem with running it up on an overmatched opponent. During the since 2013 they lead the country in number of 50+ point scoring games (18). They also know that they’re not going to get any respect from poll voters–witness the number of perennial darlings that are ahead of them with one loss. They’re a lot like BYU during the LaVell Edwards era when the Cougars were laying waste to the WAC every year. He knew the scam–some programs receive preferential treatment from the voters and media and some teams don’t. Even during the Cougars 13-0 National Championship season in 1984 that was evident. BYU won the AP poll by a mere 20 points(1160 to 1140) over a pair of one loss ‘darling’ programs (Washington and Florida). Some voters had the temerity to give Florida and Washington their first place votes. During years when a team outside of the ‘elite’ went undefeated during that era for some reason the mainstream sports media was all concerned about strength of schedule, conference power ratings and so forth. One one of the media ‘darlings’ went undefeated none of this was an issue. And it’s not like teams were lining up to come play these BYU teams in Provo at 4500+ feet above sea level.
Edwards knew that the only way he could overcome the media bias toward certain programs was to kick the hell out of every opponent his team faced. And that almost wasn’t enough. In the 1984 season BYU averaged 35.1 PPG for (2nd in the nation) and 14.1 PPG against (11th in the nation). Edwards knew that if the voters had *any* justification to screw his teams out of the title they would. That’s how Boise State lost a total of 12 games between 2002 and 2010 with two undefeated seasons and didn’t win a national title. During this 9 year stretch the Broncos compiled a record of 106-12 averaging 11.77 wins per season. The eventually got done in by ‘the scam’. No team wanted to go play on the blue ‘Smurf Turf’ in Boise so they were in the same boat as Edwards’ BYU teams. By this point, however, the poll voters had become more brazen and had no problem giving their ‘darlings’ the nod over a more deserving team. Boise State wasn’t the only Mountain Time Zone team to get screwed during this era–Kyle Whittingham’s University of Utah team went 13-0 in 2008 but ‘lost’ the National Championship to 13-1 Florida.
The National Championship ‘playoff’ system has helped somewhat but teams outside of the group of ‘media darlings’ still have to fight and claw to move up in the polls. Translation–this game will be a rout. In last year’s matchup Baylor beat Rice 70-17 and covered as a -33 point favorite racking up 793 yards of total offense in the process. This year’s Rice team could be even worse than last year’s 5-7 team and particularly on defense. Baylor rolls it up.
BET BAYLOR -30.5 OVER RICE