College Football Week 5 Predictions:

Bad beats and fluke plays are a huge part of sports and betting, so as bettors, we have to expect those things to come at some point, but with the expectation they balance out over time. Saturday felt like three years’ worth of fluke plays and bad beats crammed into one day, and it spilled over into the NFL on Sunday. After losing Baylor +2 when they had a 7-point lead with two minutes left in the game, culminating a day where a UK pick-six cost me the Under and a meaningless Iowa State score with less than a minute left killed another Under, I was at wit’s end. Sunday started the same, with the Eagles scoring a touchdown + two-point conversion to kill Saints +2.5 (game closed Saints -2.5). Thankfully, a goal-line stand from the Vikings prevented another bad beat on that Under, and it actually turned into a profitable weekend. Anyway, enough of my whining. Let’s look at the college football Week 5 slate and see where we can place some early bets to potentially get ahead of the market and, more importantly, turn the betting tides in our favor.

Alabama (+2.5; 49.5) vs Georgia

I can’t tell you how rare it is for me to have a big discrepancy from the market on THE marquee game of the weekend; however, as Georgia sits as a 2.5-point road favorite heading to Tuscaloosa, TSI tells me this line is backward, and Alabama should be the 2.5-point favorite at home, with a total of 51.5. I’m not particularly interested in the total, as there is mixed data on that, depending on how much weight you want to assign priors vs. on-field so far. The data on the spread is crystal clear: all formulas project an Alabama win over the Dawgs on Saturday night. For a peek behind the curtain, I’ve got Alabama second in opponent-adjusted net EPA per play, while Georgia is seventh. And in opponent-adjusted net points per play, Alabama is first while Georgia is 15th. Both teams are coming off a bye, so we should expect both teams’ A-games, but I think the Tide will take this one at home and hand Georgia its first regular season loss in what feels like centuries. 

 

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College Football Week 5 Best Bet: Alabama +2.5 (Play to pick ‘em)

Oklahoma State (+5.5; 54.5) vs Kansas State

Oklahoma State was a team coming into the season that a plethora of pundits touted as a playoff dark horse and potential 10-win team. TSI was much lower than market on them, while being pretty high on Kansas State, including cashing an early season ticket with the Wildcats laying 7 vs Arizona; however, after a demoralizing loss to the rising BYU Cougars, TSI is less sold on the purple cats. Oklahoma State is also coming off a loss of its own, losing to Utah in a game in which the market swung back and forth all last week. When the dust settled on Sunday, and I updated the numbers, TSI projected Oklahoma State as a 1.5-point road favorite here, so I quickly scooped up the Pokes +5.5, as I have these teams rated almost evenly, So unless you think Manhattan, Kansas is worth 6 points to the spread, the value is on OK State. The biggest discrepancy I see here that makes me confident in this bet is that the Cowboys are 18th in opponent-adjusted points per play, while Kansas State is just 57th. That’s a big gap in efficiency. Give me the underdog Cowboys on the road.

College Football Week 5 Best Bet: Oklahoma State +5.5 (Play to +3.5)

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