Time to mark the one-week countdown to next Monday’s much-anticipated college football national championship blockbuster matching LSU and Clemson.
LSU will likely sit near -5 to -5 ¹/₂-point favorites through the week pending major personnel news. Heavy action from recreational bettors could push the line in either direction in the days and hours leading up to kickoff. Sharps who had been riding LSU recently got their money in at lower prices when the game opened. Those with their eyes on the ’dog will wait to see if +6 becomes available soon. They may decide +5 ¹/₂ is the best they’ll get.
Will the SEC win another title? LSU is trying to make it 10 of the past 14. But, years of media hype have convinced many pundits and bettors that the conference has become overrated. Let’s see what this season’s bowl results are suggesting about that potential handicapping angle.
Because games that land close to the line may not tell you much about competing conferences, let’s look only at bowl results which missed the point spread by a touchdown or more. Here are ATS results for the Power 5 in betting market blowouts …
- SEC (4-3): Yup, right at the top with the most big covers. League finalists LSU and Georgia both cashed by double digits. Alabama did as well. Kentucky snuck through as a ’dog. It wasn’t total dominance, with Auburn, Florida, and Mississippi State all laying eggs. Certainly worth noting for next Monday that LSU had easy recent covers vs. Georgia and Alabama, who then went on to impress in bowl challenges.
- Big 10 (3-2): A slightly better percentage than the SEC (pending LSU’s finale). The Big 10 received negative press last week because finalists Ohio State and Wisconsin both fizzled late in their bowls. But, Iowa’s 26-point cover vs. USC, Minnesota’s outright upset of Auburn (14-point cover), and Penn State’s managing of Memphis put the league on the right side of the .500 mark.
- ACC (3-4): It’s no secret that Clemson dominated a disappointing conference. This year’s ACC bowl experience was fittingly bookended by Miami’s laughable loss to Louisiana Tech and Boston College’s no-show vs. Cincinnati. North Carolina, Louisville, and Virginia helped save face.
- Pac 12 (2-3): Mostly bad news in big decisions. Utah was confirmed as a pretender by Texas. Joining the Utes on the list of embarrassments were USC and Washington State. Maybe all anyone will remember is Oregon’s rally in the Rose Bowl to beat Wisconsin, which wasn’t a qualifier for this study.
- Big 12 (1-3): Awful. A 75 percent humiliation rate. The two teams that played for the Big 12 championship (Oklahoma and Baylor) lost to the two teams that played for the SEC championship (Alabama and Georgia) by a combined 89-42 margin … missing the market by a combined 31 points.
Though its overall dominance may be waning, college football reality still has an SEC bias.