College Football Picks
This week has been a long one thus far with a handful of weeknight games to preview and lots of college basketball research and writing for our upcoming 2025-26 College Basketball Guide that drops on Thursday, October 23. Hard to believe we’re around 2.5 weeks away from the start of yet another season. But, we still have college football right here in front of us and there are Week 8 college football picks to make.
A full day’s worth of Saturday action leaves us no shortage of options, even with 10 games from Tuesday to Friday and some teams on a bye. Try to leave no stone unturned as you seek out the top plays to make, even if they don’t come from marquee games or games you can watch even if you don’t have ESPN+.
These are my favorite Week 8 college football picks, but we have many others. You can check out our Week 8 College Football Hub to see what others are taking and also to explore all of our college football tools, power ratings, and more. See our College Football Pro Picks page for more from my colleagues and broadcast guests.
Here are my Week 8 College Football Picks:
Odds as of Thursday, October 16, 7:30 a.m. PT
UTSA at North Texas (-4, 67)
3:30 p.m. ET
There is always going to be sticker shock when a team gives up 63 points in a spotlight game played on a Friday night. That is the case this week for North Texas, who was off to a blistering 5-0 start before playing a South Florida team that was easily their best opponent to date. There was a massive strength of schedule discrepancy between the two teams and it showed, as UNT scored 36 points, but couldn’t stop a drip of water from becoming a full-fledged flood.
Sometimes it’s better to get blown out than lose a close game. It’s easier to wipe that away instead of thinking about every minute detail of what went wrong to cause your first loss of the season. So, I think Eric Morris, Skyler Cassity, and the rest of the Mean Green coaching staff were able to move on quickly.
UTSA finally let out some of their frustrations, pummeling Rice 61-13. So, you have a team that scored 60 and a team that gave up 60. Naturally, money has come in on UTSA here.
But, I disagree and so do my Week 8 college football power ratings, as I have North Texas -9 here. UTSA was a team I was high on this season, but ultimately gave up after they failed to cover and barely beat a bad Colorado State team and then lost outright to Temple in Philly. Even with Texas A&M on the schedule, UTSA has now played a lower SOS than North Texas per Sagarin.
One big change for North Texas this season under Cassity, the first-year DC who was at Sam Houston State, is generating takeaways. The Mean Green are tied for second in the nation with 14 takeaways. UTSA only has seven so far this season. On the offensive side, UNT is seventh in the nation in TD% in the red zone at 80%. They also have 35 red zone trips in six games compared to just 19 for UTSA.
Jeff Traylor is a great head coach and maybe last week was a turning point for UTSA, but I think it’s a bounce back spot for a North Texas team that has a lot of impressive stats in several areas.
Pick: North Texas -4
Maryland at UCLA (-3.5, 52.5)
7 p.m. ET
It is entirely possible that UCLA has simply become a wagon after the firing of Deshaun Foster, but I think the Bad News Bruins are still in there somewhere. This is a tricky travel spot for Maryland, but it feels to me like a wall is coming for UCLA.
They fired Foster after the embarrassing 35-10 home loss to New Mexico and worked hard in practice for interim Tim Skipper to erase the stink of that game. They went all the way to Evanston on September 27 and lost, but covered. They flew home to LA and hosted Penn State in one of the most shocking upsets of the season. Then they rallied to travel all the way to East Lansing and crushed Michigan State 38-13. And now they’re back home again. That’s a roller coaster mentally, physically, and emotionally.
This is the last truly winnable game for UCLA in my mind. I know they just beat Penn State, but they play Indiana, Nebraska, Ohio State, Washington, and USC moving forward and none of those teams will take them lightly like Penn State did, as the Nittany Lions were also coming off of the devastating Oregon loss.
Maryland has played well pretty much all season. They just haven’t finished games. They blew a 20-3 lead at home to Washington to lose 24-20 and blew a fourth-quarter lead at home to Nebraska. Maybe getting away from College Park will help, as the team can reset a little bit. They looked great in their lone road test at Wisconsin.
Qualitatively, those are my thoughts. Quantitatively, I still have Maryland -1.5 in my power ratings. Perhaps I’ve been too slow adjusting Maryland, as I think I’ve caught up well with UCLA, but Nico Iamaleava has been sacked eight times in three Big Ten games and has not thrown for more than 180 yards. He hasn’t thrown a pick, so that’s been a big help. The Bruins have relied a lot on the run. Maryland is 21st in yards per carry allowed with 3.16 and they’ve only given up two rushing TDs this season.
Even in conference games, where Maryland’s defense has been suspect at times, they’ve only allowed 3.42 yards per rush. Penn State and Michigan State aren’t on that level and Maryland, who leads the nation in TO margin at +10, including 12 interceptions, should be able to force Iamaleava to be more of a factor. And I doubt that’s a good thing. The Terps also have 20 sacks and are tied for seventh in the nation.
Pick: Maryland +3.5
Hawaii at Colorado State (-2.5, 53)
7 p.m. ET
On my edition of the VSiN College Football Podcast with host Tim Murray on Tuesday, we talked about Hawaii and Colorado State and about how well Micah Alejado has played now that he seems healthier. If you’ll recall, Alejado, the redshirt freshman first-time starter, hurt his ankle in the win over Stanford. He gutted it out as best he could in the loss to Arizona and then took a couple of weeks off to heal. He returned against Fresno State and still looked shaky, including a pick six.
In his last two games, however, Alejado has thrown for 870 yards with six touchdown passes against just one interception. Air Force and Utah State are both atrocious pass defenses, but Colorado State isn’t very good either. They’ve allowed 7.8 yards per attempt, which ranks tied for 105th in the nation. They also haven’t really played many competent passing offenses thus far.
Recently, the Rams sat down multi-year starter Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi and have been starting Jackson Brousseau. He has a 65.1% completion rate with a 5/0 TD/INT ratio, a big upgrade from Fowler-Nicolosi, who had a 53.7% completion rate, but Brousseau has only thrown for 188, 155, and 144 yards in his three starts. The Rams have had modest success running the ball, but not enough that Brousseau’s output should be that low.
Colorado State is 111th in the nation in third down conversion rate on offense and Hawaii ranks in the top 50. The Rainbow Warriors also rank in the top 50 on defense, while the Rams are 100th. Hawaii should control the game flow, stay on the field, and have the much more explosive passing offense here.
Shop around on this game, as the moneyline prices are a little bit varied.
Pick: Hawaii +2.5 / +110 (spread/ML 70/30 split)
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