Week 7 College Football: FIU vs. Liberty

How about some Tuesday night football? Conference USA followed in the footsteps of the MAC and decided a couple of years ago that it would be good for exposure and some TV time to play on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We’ve got our first such game this week, as FIU takes on Liberty with a 7 p.m. ET kick on CBS Sports Network.

Let’s break this one down and see if there’s a bet to be made.

 

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For all of this week’s college football insights, refer to our College Football Week 7 Hub.

FIU Panthers at Liberty Flames (-17.5, 55)

Tuesday, 7 p.m. ET (CBS Sports Network)

We haven’t seen Liberty in a while, as the Flames were supposed to play Appalachian State on September 28, but the devastation of Hurricane Helene forced the cancellation of the game. Many felt like that was a crucial game for Liberty’s playoff hopes, which are now dashed because they simply won’t have the strength of schedule to be considered.

It has been a rather bland season for the Flames to this point. They’ve won one game by more than the spread in this one and that was a rather underwhelming 28-10 win over UTEP. The Flames are only 34th in yards per play on the season, a metric where they ranked fifth last year. And it isn’t like the degree of difficulty has been any higher with the schedule. Per Jeff Sagarin, they’ve played the 194th-ranked schedule in the country. There are 135 FBS teams.

FIU picked up a really nice win over Louisiana Tech last time out with a 17-10 decision that gave them a winning record in conference play. It is the first time since 2018 that they’ve had a winning conference play record at any point in the season.

Make no mistake, this is still a bad football team that ranks 110th in yards per play on offense and 60th on defense, with a negative yards per play differential. They lost to FCS Monmouth a couple games ago. Keyone Jenkins has done his best with a 9/4 TD/INT ratio and a 63% completion rate, but he’s found no success running and neither has most of the rest of the roster, as the Panthers have just 3.5 yards per tote.

Liberty is only 68th in Net EPA/play according to CFB Graphs, which doesn’t really incite a lot of confidence in their ability to win this one by margin. That being said, FIU is 104th in that metric and lost by 18 to a really bad Florida Atlantic team. Their 52-16 win over Central Michigan featured six takeaways. They have two in their other four games combined.

A well-rested Liberty team in the national spotlight should have the wherewithal to blow out FIU here.

Pick: Liberty -17.5

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