[h=1]Early betting look for Week 5: Why it's time to sell Tennessee[/h]Will Harris
Special to ESPN.com
Week 4 of the college football season saw some big comebacks, big upsets, wild finishes and the first two head coach firings of the year. To kick off Week 5 we look at an undefeated team that might be done winning for the year, wonder if Syracuse is the place for the bubble-burst Irish to turn their season around and reveal which rarely-favored expansion team is laying historically huge weight.
[h=2]Portfolio checkup[/h][h=2]Buy[/h]
UCF Knights
Scott Frost will probably be tapped to succeed Mark Helfrich at Oregon soon, but in the meantime UCF is enjoying a resurgence after a winless campaign last year. The Knights claimed to have "outhit" Michigan in a 51-14 loss, then backed it up by knocking a dozen Maryland players out of the following week's overtime loss. What followed was a rout of "rival" FIU that led to the first head coach firing of the year. Frost looks like a star in the making, no surprise given his unique background under Bill Walsh, Tom Osborne and Chip Kelly.
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Arkansas Razorbacks
Don't let the fourth-quarter meltdown against Texas A&M fool you -- this outfit is ready to compete with anybody. Untimely penalties, sloppy ball security and an inability to punch it in from inside the 5-yard line are issues specific to Saturday's outing, not endemic to this program.
[h=2]Sell[/h]
Maryland Terrapins
The players dropping like flies in Orlando is a sign of things to come. Maryland is 3-0, but we are still liking our preseason play of under 5.5 wins, mostly because what we suspected in camp has borne out so far this season: this team is not physical enough in the trenches to survive life in the Big Ten East. We can't recommend lining up at the window to get on Purdue basically ever this year, but the Terps are generally a team to fade during conference play.
Tennessee Volunteers
Two good quarters against Florida mean that the Vols have now looked like an SEC contender in three out of the 12 quarters they've played so far. Florida's halftime complacency and subsequent collapse are just masking the fact that Tennessee is still playing mistake-prone and situationally unaware football. The pollsters are always the easiest to fool, but the cat is somewhat out of the bag with the oddsmakers, who have the Vols installed as a mere field-goal favorite at a struggling Georgia team that has seen its Vegas stock crash this year as well.
The reduction in value and soft schedule means that you'll need to be more circumspect in picking your spots, but don't expect this team to beat anybody that's truly any good the rest of the way.
[h=2]Hold[/h]
Michigan State Spartans
Michigan State is neither the eighth-ranked team it was before beating Notre Dame nor the 17th-ranked team it is now after losing to Wisconsin. We think the pollsters nailed it right from the start in putting Sparty between 10 and 15. No adjustment necessary; this is still a very good team that probably won't be able to take the third-best talent in the Big Ten and repeat as champions, but shouldn't be in for a "down year" either.
[h=2]Games of interest, Week 5[/h]
West Virginia Mountaineers(-3.5) vs. Kansas State Wildcats
West Virginia is favored against K-State for the fourth time in five seasons since joining the Big 12, but the Wildcats have won and covered every time. The Mountaineers have tried outgaining the Cats by 150 yards. They've tried winning the turnover margin. They've even held Kansas State to 1 yard rushing. None of it has worked, and the common threads in those four games have been the two consistent edges Kansas State enjoys: the mismatch on the sideline and a dominant 33-minute advantage in time of possession.
Notre Dame Fighting Irish (-13) at Syracuse Orange
We wrote about Notre Dame being bubble-burst last week and such teams don't usually right the ship all of a sudden. The Irish have lost five of its past six, with all five going over the total and seeing the Irish defense surrender at least 36 points. Now that defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder has been dismissed, will this crew play better?
It might have to against a Syracuse offense that's way ahead of schedule. Dino Babers has spread the Art Briles offense to his third program, and it was year two when Babers' attack really got rolling at his previous two stops. The Orange are off to a better start than we expected on that side of the ball so far, outgaining South Florida and lighting up a good Connecticut defense for 400 passing yards. Cuse wideout Amba Etta-Tawo leads the nation in receiving yards through four weeks.
This is not the kind of team -- or venue -- that a struggling road favorite wants to see right now, and if Notre Dame wins by two touchdowns it would be just the third time it's beaten a power-league team by that margin since the last meeting with Syracuse in September 2014. That was the year that this team couldn't regroup after the controversial bubble-bursting loss at Florida State, and the team would go 0-5 ATS and 1-4 SU the rest of the way. A similar fate awaits unless the staff can rally this bunch more successfully than it did two years ago.
[h=2]Movers and shakers[/h]Like last week, there are seven teams priced lower than 20-1 to win the national title at the Westgate Superbook, with Houston replacing LSU at the tail end of that list.
<aside class="inline inline-with-table" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: BentonSans, -apple-system, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; border: 1px solid rgb(220, 221, 223); clear: both; margin: 6px 0px 18px; padding: 15px; width: 565px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px;"><header class="inline-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; overflow: hidden;">[h=1]National title odds[/h]Courtesy of Westgate SuperBook
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</aside>Texas A&M (60-1 to 20-1) and Wisconsin (100-1 to 50-1) were the big movers from Saturday. And Utah was 100-1 last week but is down to 40-1 this week after clearing a major Pac-12 South hurdle with a home win over USC.
Ole Miss (still 200-1) was also a ranked team who defeated another ranked team, but the Rebels' impressive performance didn't move the needle at the Westgate, demonstrating that the oddsmakers consider a two-loss team completely out of the mix, no matter how easily forgivable the losses or how impressive the bounce-back.
Stanford, Tennessee and Florida State all moved from 25-1 last week to 20-1 after key wins.
[h=2]Chalk bits[/h]
Colorado beat Oregon to log its sixth Pac-12 win in 46 conference games since joining the league. The Buffs have been favored in league play just twice, and have been single-digit underdogs just six other times. Colorado is giving Oregon State 17 this week, and the Buffs haven't been favored by that much in conference play since 2003, when they lost straight up at Baylor as 19-point chalk.
Texas Tech is 16-1 all-time versus Kansas, but only two of those wins have come by more than three touchdowns. However, the Jayhawks are just 3-12 ATS since the end of the Mark Mangino era when catching more than four touchdowns.
BYU is 1-3 but 4-0 ATS against a brutal schedule that saw the Cougars play three Pac-12 teams and West Virginia, with only one of those games in Provo. All four were decided by a total of nine points. It's rare that BYU gives such a short price at home to a non-power conference team, but the Rockets have outgained 13 straight opponents and are off an open date.
Special to ESPN.com
Week 4 of the college football season saw some big comebacks, big upsets, wild finishes and the first two head coach firings of the year. To kick off Week 5 we look at an undefeated team that might be done winning for the year, wonder if Syracuse is the place for the bubble-burst Irish to turn their season around and reveal which rarely-favored expansion team is laying historically huge weight.
[h=2]Portfolio checkup[/h][h=2]Buy[/h]
Scott Frost will probably be tapped to succeed Mark Helfrich at Oregon soon, but in the meantime UCF is enjoying a resurgence after a winless campaign last year. The Knights claimed to have "outhit" Michigan in a 51-14 loss, then backed it up by knocking a dozen Maryland players out of the following week's overtime loss. What followed was a rout of "rival" FIU that led to the first head coach firing of the year. Frost looks like a star in the making, no surprise given his unique background under Bill Walsh, Tom Osborne and Chip Kelly.
<offer style="box-sizing: border-box;"></offer>
Don't let the fourth-quarter meltdown against Texas A&M fool you -- this outfit is ready to compete with anybody. Untimely penalties, sloppy ball security and an inability to punch it in from inside the 5-yard line are issues specific to Saturday's outing, not endemic to this program.
[h=2]Sell[/h]
The players dropping like flies in Orlando is a sign of things to come. Maryland is 3-0, but we are still liking our preseason play of under 5.5 wins, mostly because what we suspected in camp has borne out so far this season: this team is not physical enough in the trenches to survive life in the Big Ten East. We can't recommend lining up at the window to get on Purdue basically ever this year, but the Terps are generally a team to fade during conference play.
Two good quarters against Florida mean that the Vols have now looked like an SEC contender in three out of the 12 quarters they've played so far. Florida's halftime complacency and subsequent collapse are just masking the fact that Tennessee is still playing mistake-prone and situationally unaware football. The pollsters are always the easiest to fool, but the cat is somewhat out of the bag with the oddsmakers, who have the Vols installed as a mere field-goal favorite at a struggling Georgia team that has seen its Vegas stock crash this year as well.
The reduction in value and soft schedule means that you'll need to be more circumspect in picking your spots, but don't expect this team to beat anybody that's truly any good the rest of the way.
[h=2]Hold[/h]
Michigan State is neither the eighth-ranked team it was before beating Notre Dame nor the 17th-ranked team it is now after losing to Wisconsin. We think the pollsters nailed it right from the start in putting Sparty between 10 and 15. No adjustment necessary; this is still a very good team that probably won't be able to take the third-best talent in the Big Ten and repeat as champions, but shouldn't be in for a "down year" either.
[h=2]Games of interest, Week 5[/h]
West Virginia Mountaineers(-3.5) vs. Kansas State Wildcats
West Virginia is favored against K-State for the fourth time in five seasons since joining the Big 12, but the Wildcats have won and covered every time. The Mountaineers have tried outgaining the Cats by 150 yards. They've tried winning the turnover margin. They've even held Kansas State to 1 yard rushing. None of it has worked, and the common threads in those four games have been the two consistent edges Kansas State enjoys: the mismatch on the sideline and a dominant 33-minute advantage in time of possession.
Notre Dame Fighting Irish (-13) at Syracuse Orange
We wrote about Notre Dame being bubble-burst last week and such teams don't usually right the ship all of a sudden. The Irish have lost five of its past six, with all five going over the total and seeing the Irish defense surrender at least 36 points. Now that defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder has been dismissed, will this crew play better?
It might have to against a Syracuse offense that's way ahead of schedule. Dino Babers has spread the Art Briles offense to his third program, and it was year two when Babers' attack really got rolling at his previous two stops. The Orange are off to a better start than we expected on that side of the ball so far, outgaining South Florida and lighting up a good Connecticut defense for 400 passing yards. Cuse wideout Amba Etta-Tawo leads the nation in receiving yards through four weeks.
This is not the kind of team -- or venue -- that a struggling road favorite wants to see right now, and if Notre Dame wins by two touchdowns it would be just the third time it's beaten a power-league team by that margin since the last meeting with Syracuse in September 2014. That was the year that this team couldn't regroup after the controversial bubble-bursting loss at Florida State, and the team would go 0-5 ATS and 1-4 SU the rest of the way. A similar fate awaits unless the staff can rally this bunch more successfully than it did two years ago.
[h=2]Movers and shakers[/h]Like last week, there are seven teams priced lower than 20-1 to win the national title at the Westgate Superbook, with Houston replacing LSU at the tail end of that list.
<aside class="inline inline-with-table" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: BentonSans, -apple-system, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; border: 1px solid rgb(220, 221, 223); clear: both; margin: 6px 0px 18px; padding: 15px; width: 565px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px;"><header class="inline-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; overflow: hidden;">[h=1]National title odds[/h]Courtesy of Westgate SuperBook
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| TEAM | LAST WEEK | CURRENT |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 7-2 | 7-2 |
| Ohio State | 4-1 | 4-1 |
| Louisville | 5-1 | 5-1 |
| Clemson | 6-1 | 6-1 |
| Michigan | 10-1 | 10-1 |
| Washington | 12-1 | 12-1 |
| Houston | 20-1 | 15-1 |
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</aside>Texas A&M (60-1 to 20-1) and Wisconsin (100-1 to 50-1) were the big movers from Saturday. And Utah was 100-1 last week but is down to 40-1 this week after clearing a major Pac-12 South hurdle with a home win over USC.
Ole Miss (still 200-1) was also a ranked team who defeated another ranked team, but the Rebels' impressive performance didn't move the needle at the Westgate, demonstrating that the oddsmakers consider a two-loss team completely out of the mix, no matter how easily forgivable the losses or how impressive the bounce-back.
Stanford, Tennessee and Florida State all moved from 25-1 last week to 20-1 after key wins.
[h=2]Chalk bits[/h]
Colorado beat Oregon to log its sixth Pac-12 win in 46 conference games since joining the league. The Buffs have been favored in league play just twice, and have been single-digit underdogs just six other times. Colorado is giving Oregon State 17 this week, and the Buffs haven't been favored by that much in conference play since 2003, when they lost straight up at Baylor as 19-point chalk.
Texas Tech is 16-1 all-time versus Kansas, but only two of those wins have come by more than three touchdowns. However, the Jayhawks are just 3-12 ATS since the end of the Mark Mangino era when catching more than four touchdowns.
BYU is 1-3 but 4-0 ATS against a brutal schedule that saw the Cougars play three Pac-12 teams and West Virginia, with only one of those games in Provo. All four were decided by a total of nine points. It's rare that BYU gives such a short price at home to a non-power conference team, but the Rockets have outgained 13 straight opponents and are off an open date.
