College Football Week 8 Late Line Movement Best Bets from the T Shoe Index:

Last week, we split our late-week bets, 1-1, after Miami (OH) decided to score a 50-yard touchdown in the final minute rather than kneeling out the clock leading by several scores to kill the Under. Nonetheless, we’re 8-5 on the season on this Thursday article bets, so there’s certainly something to evaluating the market on these Thursday mornings with the T Shoe Index that is working nicely. As I often do, I’ve been running several formula tests on the side to always try to improve the model’s accuracy, and one formula, in particular, has caught my eye as potentially becoming “The” TSI number, beginning as early as next week. I’ll compare the market to both my official TSI projection for this week as well as this test formula that I was able to project, on average, within 1.6 points of the midweek lines. Let’s see where there’s some value for college football Week 8 best bets:

 

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Kentucky Wildcats at Florida Gators (+2; 42.5) 

Saturday, 7:45 p.m. ET (SECN)

After opening as a 2.5-point favorite at DraftKings on Sunday, the Florida Gators now find themselves as 2-point underdogs in The Swamp against a Kentucky team that’s been wildly inconsistent this year – having great games against Georgia and Ole Miss while getting annihilated by South Carolina and losing to Vanderbilt. You never want to see a player get hurt, and I wish a speedy recovery to QB Graham Mertz, but I’m not so sure from a football perspective that coach Billy Napier being forced to turn to star freshman DJ Lagway isn’t a blessing in disguise for the future of this Gators team. Lagway has made some freshman mistakes along the way, but I think his upside and the confidence of knowing he’s QB1 now will help steady his play. TSI projects the Gators as 1-point home favorites, and my test formula confirms the pick by projecting Florida -2.5. If this game was in Lexington, I’d have no interest because Florida has a mental block playing there for some reason, but I’ll take 2 in The Swamp with “Sunbelt Billy.” 

College Football Week 8 Best Bet(s): Florida +2, ML +105

Iowa Hawkeyes (-5; 40.5) at Michigan State Spartans 

7:30 p.m. ET (NBC)

This isn’t a big line move, but it is a wrong line move, in my opinion. Iowa opened -6 before quickly being bet up to -6.5 but has since been bet down to -5. I checked the weather and the injury reports Thursday morning. Nothing indicates this move is for external factors, so Iowa is severely underpriced here if we’re talking about these teams at face value. No offense to my Sparty Nation friends, but I don’t think Spartan Stadium is a particularly raucous atmosphere that would warrant extra home-field advantage, and every metric and formula I look at is heavily on Iowa. TSI projects the line at 8.5, while my test formula is closer to 10. Michigan State’s defense has been ok this year – 31st in TSI – but Iowa boasts a (checks notes again for accuracy) top-25 TSI offense. On the other side of the ball is where I expect it to be particularly ugly for the Spartans, where they’re 75th ranked offense is challenged by the #11 TSI defense.  QB Aidan Chiles starts for Michigan State, and he has been particularly turnover-prone; playing against an opportunistic defense like Iowa will probably be hell for him for 60 minutes. This feels like such a square play, but the numbers and my eyeballs tell me it’s the right side.

College Football Week 8 Best Bet: Iowa -5 (Play to -7)

For more Week 8 college football analysis, visit the Week 8 College Football Hub, exclusively on VSiN.com.

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