College Football Handicapping Articles

Georgia State Panthers Picks for Week 13 in Doc's Specialization Series
by Ricky Dimon - 11/21/2019

A home date with the South Alabama Jaguars this weekend may be just what the doctor ordered for the Georgia State Panthers. No kind of prescription was necessary as the Panthers started the season 6-2 with wins over Tennessee and Army in addition to a triple-overtime loss to Texas State. In other words, they could have been 7-1 through eight games.

Wyoming Cowboys Football Picks Week 13 vs. Colorado State: Specialization Series
by Chris Vasile - 11/19/2019

Each week this article will give you a small recap on how the team fared in their last game. You'd be surprised at how many times a team's win/loss outcome was either justified or lucky to happen. The box score may say one thing, but actually watching the game and seeing what's happening is a vital tool in handicapping. At the end of the article, I'll give you a selection on the upcoming game.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 13 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Alan Matthews - 11/18/2019

UCLA likely is going to finish below. 500 for a fourth straight season, although the Bruins could get bowl eligible with an upset here and then a home win over Cal the following Saturday. Coach Chip Kelly is safe in Westwood only because that school is strapped financially - which is hard to believe if you have seen the campus and how much it costs to go there - but Kelly will enter 2020 on the hot seat.

NCAA Football Betting Odds: Week 12 Line Movements & Last-Minute News
by Chris Vasile - 11/15/2019

I praised Joe Burrow early this week for ultimately winning the Heisman Trophy with his performance against Alabama last Saturday. Now I'm going to (finally) praise the CFP Committee for getting this week's rankings spot on. LSU deserves to be the top-ranked team in the nation, followed by Ohio State.

Georgia State Panthers Picks for Week 12 in Doc's Specialization Series
by Ricky Dimon - 11/14/2019

For the most part, the Georgia State Panthers' 2019 campaign has been one big heap of success. But things went south last weekend against Louisiana-Monroe, and they could go south in a real hurry with quarterback Dan Ellington having suffered a knee injury during the recent loss.

Four College Football Teams That Fell Way Under Expectations Week 1
by Trevor Whenham - 9/4/2019

Judging college football teams before the season starts is a very inexact science. We don't have complete access to fall training camps, there is no preseason to give us clues, and between players making the huge jump up from high school and an increasing number of transfers, we have to make too many guesses about what teams will have on the field. We can usually figure out that the best teams are going to look good and the worst teams are going to look lousy. It's the teams in the middle that are the toughest to figure out, though.

How to Handicap College Teams That Won't Name Starting QB
by Trevor Whenham - 8/27/2019

College football can be a ridiculous sport at times. Coaches, trying to get any edge they can, will do truly frustrating, silly things. The latest manifestation of this is the recent trend of not naming starting quarterbacks heading into games. There have always been some coaches who don't really embrace the idea of public depth charts.

2019 College Football Season Win Totals Predictions
by Trevor Whenham - 3/18/2019

College football still feels like it is a million days away, but it always feels closer every year when the first college football season win totals are posted. SportsBetting.ag sent the first totals for 2019 our way this week, and six numbers stood out from the crowd as the most interesting to take a look at and see if we could find some value. A couple of the numbers feel surprisingly juicy.

College Football National Championship Game Betting Trends
by Trevor Whenham - 1/5/2019

As we near the end of the fifth year of the College Football Playoff, I find myself getting grumpier and grumpier about the whole enterprise. I was mostly opposed to the idea of the playoff when it started because I doubted it would solve much. Instead of subjectively and politically selecting two teams in a locked room somewhere, now a committee of people would select four.

Expert College Bowl Game Betting Advice: How to Handicap Star Players Skipping Game
by Trevor Whenham - 12/18/2018

It is amazing how quickly things can change. It was only two years ago, in 2016, that Leonard Fournette and Christian McCaffrey made waves by opting to skip their bowl games and prepare for the draft while avoiding injury. The decisions were highly controversial at the time, and both guys had to deal with a whole lot of negativity and claims that they were hurting their teams - giving up on them, even. But now the practice is so widespread that it feels like much of the potential first round that isn't in the playoff is sitting out.

Expert College Bowl Game Handicapping: Location Important
by Trevor Whenham - 12/13/2018

Location, location, location. It's the mantra of real estate investment, but it is also a big part of a successful approach to college football bowl game betting. Bowl games are in so many different places these days, and some are clearly more exotic than others. Those locations can have an impact on the outcome of games - sometimes for one team more than the other and sometimes for both teams.

Handicapping College Bowl Games After Coaching Changes
by Trevor Whenham - 12/4/2018

As we head into the college football bowl season, the coaching carousel in the sport has been very boring so far - at least compared to past years. Clay Helton somehow managed to keep his job at USC, and that stopped what would likely have been a big game of coaching musical chairs. Jeff Brohm decided to stay at Purdue against all odds, and Bill Clark took an extension at UAB. And guys like Mack Brown and Les Miles took jobs that would otherwise have caused an existing program to lose a coach.

College Football Bowl Game Betting Advice: Biggest Mismatches
by Trevor Whenham - 12/4/2018

The first thing I like to look at when the bowls are set are the biggest mismatches - at least according to the odds. There can be good opportunities in these games - sometimes jumping on the favorites and running with them, and other times by backing the big underdogs. This is a strange year because two of the three biggest mismatches in the eyes of oddsmakers are actually in the championship games - Alabama is a two-touchdown favorite over Oklahoma, and Clemson is favored by 11.5 points against Notre Dame.

2018 College Bowl Game Betting and Handicapping: Tough Lines to Judge
by Trevor Whenham - 12/4/2018

When you first look at the bowl pairings, there are some that stand out as straightforward. You know who you think is going to win, and one side of the spread calls out to you immediately. And then there are games like the three we are going to discuss here. The games which could be really straightforward if everything goes exactly right but which are much more complicated than that because of all the uncertainty, the questions, the reasons to have a headache.

NCAA Football Betting Odds: Championship Week Line Movements & Last-Minute News
by Alan Matthews - 11/29/2018

The Top 3 of the penultimate College Football Playoff rankings were unchanged on Tuesday, to little surprise with all three of those schools - Alabama, Clemson and Notre Dame - being unbeaten. All eyes, though, were on spots 4-6 following big wins last week for Ohio State over Michigan and Oklahoma at West Virginia.

Weekly Big Ten Football Betting Report: Expert Predictions and Analysis
by Chris Vasile - 11/27/2018

It's Championship Weekend among the Power 5 Conferences, and it should bring casual fans and bettors some awesome football games. The action gets underway on Friday with two conference championships set to be contested. The first happens in the MAC as 10-2 Buffalo hosts 7-5 Northern Illinois. The Bulls are currently laying 3.5 points with the total set at 49.5. The nightcap sees No. 17 Utah taking on No. 16 Washington at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. for the Pac-12 Championship. As of writing this, the Huskies are laying five points.

College Football Playoff Scenarios with Betting Odds
by Trevor Whenham - 11/27/2018

We are now just one set of games away from the College Football Playoff, and it doesn't really feel like there is too much left to be determined. In fact, it feels really short of drama. Three of the four spots feel quite established, and even the fourth isn't as competitive as it has been in some years. Let's take a look at the remaining contenders, their odds to win the national title from Bovada, and their path to glory:

NCAA Football Betting Odds: Week 13 Line Movements & Last-Minute News
by Alan Matthews - 11/23/2018

Week 12 was pretty uneventful around the nation, with 10 of the top 11 teams in the College Football Playoff Top 25 all winning - the only one that didn't was then-No. 9 West Virginia, which torpedoed any shot the Mountaineers had of reaching the playoff.

Weekly Big Ten Football Betting Report: Expert Predictions and Analysis
by Chris Vasile - 11/20/2018

It's Week 14 in college football, and one look at the matchups this weekend will leave even the most casual of fans salivating at all the excitement. Rivalry Week is one of the best weeks in college football, and this year is no different. Just look at this list of games; No. 4 Michigan vs No. 10 Ohio State, Auburn vs No. 1 Alabama, Oklahoma vs West Virginia, Washington vs Washington State, UCF vs South Florida, Notre Dame vs USC, South Carolina vs Clemson, Utah State vs Boise State, Troy vs Appalachian State, and Florida at Florida State, just to name a few.

Expert NCAA Football Handicapping; How to Bet Rivalry Games
by Trevor Whenham - 11/20/2018

We are heading into the best weekend of the college football season. So many division and conference races to decide, and all while playing rivalry games. Many of the top teams in the country finish out their regular season by playing their most hated rival, and every year several of those games have major implications beyond just the hatred. This year, for example, Alabama and Auburn and Michigan and Ohio State have massive playoff implications, and the Apple Cup up in Washington could as well.