College Football Handicapping Articles

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 7 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 10/11/2021

I told you last week that the only thing scary about October is when ranked teams have to take on unranked opponents. It wasn’t a complete Friday the 13th massacre, but No. 1 Alabama went on the road to Kyle Field and lost to unranked Texas A&M as 18.5-point favorites. Fourth-ranked Penn State went to Kinnick Stadium to tangle with No. 3 Iowa and fell three points short in what was surprisingly a great game from start to finish.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 6
by Chris Vasile - 10/7/2021

If you aren’t familiar with the “zig-zag” theory in sports betting, I suggest looking it up. It’s most commonly used in the NBA Playoffs as the theory states to take exactly the opposite of what happened in the previous game. For example, if the underdog covered in Game 1, the favorite would be the play to cover in Game 2. In football, the Zig-Zag theory can hold water, but it’s a lot harder to predict as the games are weekly not every other day. I’ve been zigging and zagging on the Owls for over five weeks now, and we’ve made little progress.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 6 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 10/4/2021

If you’re a kid or a parent with a kid, the first thing you probably think of when October rolls around is Halloween. Decorating the house, candy, trick or treating and scary movies. What a wonderful time. If you’re a ranked team when October rolls around, you are probably not thinking about Halloween, but you should be very scared of what lies ahead. Look at Week 5 as a whole. No. 3 Oregon lost, No. 8 Arkansas lost, No. 9 Notre Dame lost, No. 10 Florida lost, No. 20 UCLA lost, and No. 21 Baylor lost.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 5
by Chris Vasile - 9/30/2021

Have you ever bet on a game and saw the first few minutes of action and thought that your bet was toast after a few plays or minutes of action? That was me last weekend when I decided to bet on Florida Atlantic to not only cover the spread but beat Air Force outright. The Owls got the ball first and took a delay of game penalty before they even snapped the ball and then proceeded to lose seven yards on that drive. Three plays in, and I knew my bet was toast. Air Force went down and scored on the next two possession, and just like that it was 14-0 and I was able to find something else to do with my time. I will be the first to tell you it was a dud of a pick, and we are going to do better this week.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 5 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 9/27/2021

For the teams that should have easily beaten their opponents last week, it was rather straightforward. No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Georgia combined to beat their foes by 125-14. Georgia won 62-0, and Alabama snuck by with a 63-14 win. No. 3 Oregon made light work of Arizona, while No. 4 Oklahoma was given all they could handle against a plucky West Virginia team and barely escaped with a 16-13 win.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 4
by Chris Vasile - 9/23/2021

If you’ve been in the sports betting industry as long as I have, you learn a few things in the process. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that sometimes the best bet you can make is to not make a bet at all. Take last week’s FAU game for example. I could have done a 900-word piece on why Florida Atlantic was going to thrash an FCS opponent; Fordham, and it would have sounded fine and dandy on paper.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 4 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 9/20/2021

It was a rather straightforward week in College Football over the weekend, with most ranked teams handling their business and coming away with a win. Three games featured two ranked opponents, so, rightfully, someone had to lose. The only game that a ranked team lost to an unranked foe was the UCLA/Fresno State game in which No. 13 UCLA lost, 40-37. The top four teams in the country remain unchanged with just one small tweak – Oregon moved up from No. 4 to No. 3, and the Oklahoma Sooners fell from No. 3 to No. 4.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 3 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 9/13/2021

Depending on which school you go to, which school you went to, or which school you actively cheer for, you’ll have a major bias towards your team and in particular when it comes to your team and their chances at getting into the College Football Playoffs. If you, like myself, are from Canada and don’t really have a “favorite team” or alma mater to cheer for, you should feel happy that Week 2 was a big win for the “we want different teams in the College Football Playoff” cheering section.

WynnBET Pays Out an Incredible $80,000 College Football Parlay Play
by Dave Schwab - 9/13/2021

The new season of college football is underway and it started out with a bang for one lucky sports bettor. Following the first full week of games, WynnBET mobile sportsbook tweeted out news of the big win involving a 14-game parlay play. While the winner of this wager has chosen to remain anonymous, WynnBET did mention that the wager was placed in Michigan. It was also noted that the return on the $10 parlay wager added up to $79,935.70.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 2
by Chris Vasile - 9/9/2021

I think my favorite days of the football season are the five days leading up to a team’s Week 2 game. During those days, you hear the most ridiculous statements and overreactions you will ever hear throughout the football season. People will say that Team X is toast and won’t win a game all season long, while others will be quick to anoint a team the next National Champion. The one basic principle that I try to follow throughout a long football season is that no team is as good or as bad as their last game. Each game is its own entity and should be treated as such.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 2 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 9/6/2021

After the long-anticipated wait of a full Saturday of college football, we had 12 straight hours of madness, and we enjoyed every single second of it. We had upsets, near upsets, huge scores, dismal offensive performances (hello Penn State and Wisconsin), great defensive performances (hello Georgia) and we had perhaps the game of the year last night when Notre Dame survived Florida State 41-38 in overtime after blowing an 18-point fourth-quarter lead. We have one game left on the Week 1 card tonight, but that doesn’t mean the lines for the Week 2 haven’t been posted.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 1
by Chris Vasile - 9/3/2021

Football fans and bettors alike, welcome to the 2021 Mid-Major Betting Report. I am very excited to continue this annual piece that focuses on a select team from a smaller conference to help ensure a profit for the upcoming football season. For those of you who are new to the Mid-Major Betting Report, I will be taking you on a season-long journey with the Florida Atlantic Owls. The Owls are a team I have pegged to go “over” their season win total of seven. And be focusing on their day-to-day reports, we believe this content will give you the inside track to information pertaining to not only the Owls, but the rest of the conference.

2021 Tennessee Volunteers Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/30/2021

Josh Heupel is in. All the Volunteer players are out. The Jeremy Pruitt debacle came to its merciful conclusion after another losing season in Knoxville. Tennessee football continues to be an SEC punch line and has endured three losing seasons in the last four years. Heupel, who led Central Florida to a 28-8 mark over the past three seasons, has been brought in to pick up the pieces.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 1 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 8/30/2021

After 229 days without college football on our televisions, one of the best sports around returned on Saturday. I couldn’t be happier. We were treated to one really good (sloppy) game that saw Illinois upset Nebraska as seven-point underdogs. The other four games on the docket were blowouts and essentially wrapped up by halftime. Nonetheless, football is football, and I soaked up every minute of it.

2021 Texas A&M Aggies Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/30/2021

head coach Jimbo Fisher boasted that the Aggies are going to “beat (Nick Saban’s) ass”. The noise continued through summer as the bobblehead media all suggested that Texas A&M is some kind of legitimate challenger to the Crimson Tide in the SEC West. And it reached a crescendo when the Aggies started the season ranked No. 6 in the country.

2021 Florida Gators Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/26/2021

I’m a big fan of Dan Mullen’s work on the field. All Mullen does is field quality teams in one of the most competitive conferences in football. He has gone 29-9 straight up in three years at Florida and has a 98-55 career record; all in the SEC. Mullen is legit. On its surface, last year’s 8-4 campaign seems like a nondescript year.

2021 Auburn Tigers Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/26/2021

Gus Malzahn soaked every last ounce of goodwill and benefit of the doubt out of his near miss in the 2014 National Championship Game. In the end, the Tigers faithful grew sick of Malzahn’s mediocrity, and he was finally cut loose after 2020’s COVID campaign. In comes Bryan Harsin, who has made his bones shepherding Boise State for the last seven seasons.

2021 Minnesota Golden Gophers Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/25/2021

I am bullish on the Golden Gophers this season. P.J. Fleck’s squad is one of the most experienced teams in the nation and just two years removed from an 11-2 campaign in 2019. Minnesota did slink back to a 3-4 season last fall. But they didn’t play poorly and weren’t nearly as big of a mess as other Big Ten underachievers like Wisconsin and Michigan last year.

2021 Michigan State Spartans Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/25/2021

I’m not a fan of Mel Tucker. At all. However, after Mark Dantonio’s odd departure from East Lansing last year, the Spartans felt like Tucker was the best option to turn the program around after dismal 2018 and 2019 campaigns. Tucker, whose college head-coaching resume prior to Michigan State was one unimpressive 5-7 season in Colorado, was able to lay his foundation during the odd 2020 COVID season. Now he’s hoping to take a small step forward and get the Spartans back to being competitive in the East.

2021 Maryland Terrapins Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 8/25/2021

Maryland’s 2020 season kind of summed it up as a microcosm of the Big Ten last year. The Terps pulled two of the biggest upsets in college football last year in back-to-back weeks. First they beat Minnesota in overtime, 45-44, as a 21-point underdog. Then they followed that up the following Saturday with a 35-19 win over Penn State in Happy Valley as a 27-point underdog.