Gearing up for College Football

By Ted Kane
8-29-06

College football gets underway this week, with a number of enticing pre-season matches lined up beginning Thursday. 'Pre-season' is somewhat of a misnomer, at least relative to what fans of professional ball are used to. The games are official as far as the polls and final NCAA standings are concerned, it's just that they involve teams from
different conferences playing each other and make no difference toward determining the champions of individual conferences (except in rare instances as a tiebreaker). In any event, the money surrounding these contests is as green as any other; in fact, some of the games, particularly the ones pitting perennial powerhouses against perpetual
laughingstocks, seem to be motivated almost solely by money. Here are some thoughts for those who would like to hail down this gravy train for the chance at a taste this weekend.

Point spreads in preseason games are a bit of a crapshoot. The teams are all starting at zero, and it is difficult to accurately assess any team's true ability. Even if you are the type of person who reads all the college football previews and puts a lot of effort into following the sport, you are still going on reputation to a significant extent. Further, many of these match-ups are completely novel. You have about a century of historical results to consider when handicapping something like Ohio State vs. Michigan; you can't say that about the University of Idaho's upcoming game at Michigan State. You may not even know that Idaho's sports teams are called the Vandals.

Still, it seems pretty safe to say the Spartans will take the Vandals. Likewise, I have a hard time envisioning the pre-season number one Buckeyes falling to the Salukis of Northern Illinois University, at least in football. But what is a fair spread? Evaluating these types of contests from the betting perspective, the x-factor seems to be the
coaching staff. Are the teams going to hold back, or is the coach going to allow the players to run up the score? Is the uneven match going to be used as an opportunity for the coach to get some players into the game in the second half and, if so, does the second and third sting of a team from a big conference still hold a considerable edge?
Some of the pointspreads this week seem real big. But they may not be big enough.

The line on both the games I mentioned as examples have gone down considerably from their opening marks. I guess people see the 22 points or whatever and say, that's a lot of points. It is, but how are the Vandals, invariably the whipping boys for the lesser competition of the Mountain West, going to score multiple times against such a strong opponent from the Big Ten? Ohio State lost a lot of players on defense to the NFL last season, but let's be real about it. The only hope for people betting on the dogs there is that Jim Tressell will try not to embarrass his guests too badly. He probably will try, but I'd guess such an effort gets lost on Southern Illinois.

The oddsmakers are trying to make the underdogs look tempting. That's their job. But this is not a good time to fall for it. There may be a couple good plays that way--Bowling Green has somewhat of a chance to at least cover playing in Cleveland against Wisconsin and their new head coach--but regardless of the odds, I'd think twice before backing a side I didn't think had a chance to win outright on a weekend marked by such extreme disparity..

Ed Note:  For the best college lines on campus, check out VIPSports.