College Football Handicapping Articles

Ranking College Football Bowl Games, 1-35
by Nicholas Tolomeo - 12/13/2012

As I do every year here at Doc’s Sports, I will rank the college football bowl games from 1-35. I have considered all things for these rankings from matchups to venue to betting angles and potential for drama. This looks like it has the potential to be a great bowl season. Click the links on some of these bowls for free betting predictions for that particular bowl.

College Football Bowl Trends: Conference Domination
by Nicholas Tolomeo - 12/12/2012

Conference realignment has shaken college football to its core, but certain trends still remain. Many college bowl games maintain traditional matchups, and perhaps there are no more valuable trends in college football to follow than college football bowl trends. Players and coaches come and go, but it always seems that conference strengths and weaknesses hold true, and those manifest themselves every late December and early January during bowl season.

Ranking the Best Bowl Games for 2012-13
by Trevor Whenham - 12/11/2012

I’m not a Bowl snob. Some people believe that a bowl isn’t worth watching unless it is a BCS Bowl or at least played in January. I’ll watch any bowl game, though, and I often enjoy games in mid-December as much or more than the ones that get all the headlines and attention from bettors. As I look at the schedule of bowl games this year, here are the 10 games that stand out as the most interesting both as a fan and a bettor. They are presented in chronological order:

College Football Bowl Handicapping: Departed Coaches
by Trevor Whenham - 12/11/2012

The coaching carousel has been spinning out of control in college football this year. At this point there are 10 programs that are heading into a bowl game after having made a coaching change, and with several big vacancies still open there could be even more before all is said and done. Each of these situations is a potential headache for handicappers. Sometimes the coach leaves the team as soon as he gets a new job.

2013 Rose Bowl Picks: Stanford vs. Wisconsin Betting Odds and Predictions
by Trevor Whenham - 12/4/2012

This is probably no one’s definition of a dream Rose Bowl matchup. With their surprising upset in the Big Ten Championship Game the Badgers become the first five-loss team ever to play in this game. The conference championship game model may generate more revenues for the conference, but it is to blame for ugliness like this. Stanford had a much better regular season and is the deserving representative of their conference. Few would have expected them to be before the season, though, as nearly everyone expected Oregon and USC to battle for supremacy in the Pac-12.

2013 Fiesta Bowl Picks: Kansas State vs. Oregon Betting Odds
by Trevor Whenham - 12/4/2012

It has seemed likely for several weeks that the Ducks and Wildcats would meet in the BCS. As soon as Alabama lost to Texas A&M, though, it seemed most likely they would meet in the BCS National Championship Game, not in the Fiesta Bowl. But then within an hour of each other both programs suffered huge losses. Oregon fell to Stanford in a close one, while Kansas State was crushed by Baylor. The Wildcats still won the Big 12 despite that setback, and they secured the Fiesta Bowl bid automatically as a result.

2013 Orange Bowl Picks: Florida State vs. Northern Illinois Betting Odds
by Trevor Whenham - 12/4/2012

It didn’t seem likely for much of the season, but we have a BCS buster. Even more surprising, it isn’t an unbeaten mid-major squad, and it comes from the MAC — hardly the sexiest league in the country. Thanks to a big win over Kent State (another team that would have busted the BCS with a win) in the MAC Championship Game, and losses by UCLA and Nebraska in their championship contests, Northern Illinois was able to climb far enough in the BCS standings to make their selection mandatory. And that’s how we end up with an Orange Bowl pairing that precious few people will care about.

2012 Poinsettia Bowl Picks: San Diego State vs. BYU Betting Odds
by Trevor Whenham - 12/4/2012

The San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl is a game that doesn’t get a lot of attention since it is typically played on a weeknight before Christmas. This is the eighth year of the modern era of this bowl, though, and at least five of the previous seven games have been more than just a little interesting. In fact, last year’s TCU victory over Louisiana Tech was one of the more enjoyable games of the whole bowl season.

2012 New Mexico Bowl Picks: Arizona vs. Nevada Odds and Betting Predictions
by Trevor Whenham - 12/4/2012

The first bowl game of the year this year almost certainly won’t be the best one by the time they are all played, but it certainly is an intriguing one. And we can be certain of one thing — it won’t be boring. Nevada isn’t nearly as strong as they have been in recent years, but their offense is still potent and creative. Arizona is well ahead of where they are supposed to be in the first year of a bold and unrecognizable new era, and the Wildcats will be looking to end the year on a high note.

College Football Betting: Conference Championship Game Trends
by Nicholas Tolomeo - 11/30/2012

The first weekend in December has traditionally been known as Championship Saturday. The action now starts tonight with the MAC Championship Game and the Pac-12 Championship. With the rash of conference realignment over the past few years, there are now six conference championship games. Four games are played at neutral sites: Big Ten in Indianapolis, ACC in Charlotte, SEC in Atlanta and MAC in Detroit and two at campus sites, Pac-12 and Conference USA.

BCS Bowl Projections
by Nicholas Tolomeo - 11/29/2012

With championship Friday and Saturday upon us in college football, the bowl picture begins to sort itself out. A few college bowl bids have already been handed out. However, here are projections for the other major BCS bowls.

Reasons Notre Dame Will Not Win BCS National Championship
by T.O. Whenham - 11/28/2012

When it comes to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, there isn’t much grey area. You either believe in them or you detest them. They are the New York Yankees of college football. I decidedly fall into the group made up of doubters. I don’t even know who they will be facing in the BCS Championship Game yet, and I am confident they will lose, and lose decisively. Here are four of the many reasons why:

Ranking the College Football Conference Championship Games
by T.O. Whenham - 11/28/2012

With conference championships on tap in college football this weekend, that means that most of the regular season play is finished, and it’s a much lighter schedule than normal as result. The reduced workload leaves us time to do other important things — like ranking the six conference championship games to be played this week. I don’t care about their media exposure or general sexiness. All that matters to me is their attractiveness for bettors:

College Football Handicapping: Change Approach for Championship Games
by T.O. Whenham - 11/28/2012

In many ways conference championship games in college football are just like any of the other games that came before them in the 13 weeks of the college football regular season. In a few key ways, though, handicapping them is slightly different. Handicappers who consider these differences and how they might impact different games have an edge over those who ignore the differences. Here are six of those differences to ponder:

Looking Back at the Week in College Football Betting
by T.O. Whenham - 11/27/2012

It’s time again for our weekly look back at the highs and lows of the college football week from a betting perspective — the last time we’ll be doing it this season. I’ll start out with a complaint about the most frustrating game I have watched in a very long time, and then hit on four more games that surely frustrated others almost as much.

College Football Betting and Handicapping: Scouting the Week Ahead
by Alan Matthews - 11/26/2012

It’s the final week of college football’s regular season – outside of Army-Navy next Saturday – so it will be the final NCAA week look-ahead of the year, although you can certainly expect plenty of bowl previews and the like for the postseason.

This Week in College Football Betting by the Numbers
by Aaron Smith - 11/21/2012

If you like upsets, you absolutely loved last weekend’s college football action. The top two teams in the BCS Standings both went down, and the entire BCS rankings were shaken up in a way no one could have predicted. Oregon and Kansas State were the big losers of the week, and they are almost assuredly out of the title picture.

College Football Betting and Handicapping: Scouting the Week Ahead
by Alan Matthews - 11/19/2012

I don’t want to hate on Notre Dame, as it’s rather clichй. In fact, I used to like the Irish back in the day. But they are so freaking lucky. Notre Dame is atop the polls after stunning losses by Kansas State and Oregon on Saturday, and all the Irish have to do is win at Southern Cal this Saturday to guarantee themselves a spot in the National Championship Game.

Looking Back at the Week in College Football Betting
by T.O. Whenham - 11/19/2012

We can’t look back on last weekend’s action without discussing the fall from grace of the top two ranked teams in the country. My theory is that both Kansas State and Oregon took bribes from the SEC after that conference faced the real possibility of not even being in the BCS Championship Game. Oregon was just much more subtle about throwing their game than the Wildcats were.

College Football Betting: Rivalry Games
by T.O. Whenham - 11/19/2012

One of the greatest things about college football is the rivalry games, and the weekend after Thanksgiving is typically full of the most bitter of rivalries. This year a shocking number of those rivalries have major implications on the National Championship and the rest of the BCS bowl picture. Here’s a look at seven rivalry games this week that can determine more than just bragging rights between hated rivals: