College Football Best Bets:

We’ve enjoyed the NFL preseason in the Tuley’s Takes home office (wish we had been betting more as underdogs and especially Unders have fared well), but excited for “real” football with CFB Week 0 this Saturday.

The main focus is on the noon ET opener with No. 10 Florida State facing Georgia Tech in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin, Ireland. We also get SMU-Nevada on the main betting board at 8 p.m. ET. I wish I was able to attend that game as I’m moving my daughter Peyton – the one who starred in two musicals in the spring and is auditioning for Guys & Dolls, which has a lot of great gambling references – into her dorm at the University of Nevada-Reno on Friday and will be back in Vegas on Saturday signing up proxy clients at Circa Contest Weekend. There are also four “extra games” on the board for wall-to-wall college football, capped by Delaware State-Hawaii at midnight ET, which most of you know will be one of the biggest bet games of the day since it’s the get-out game! This is just the appetizer before the Week 1 main course next weekend, but I like one play.

 

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Georgia Tech +10.5 vs. Florida State

Saturday, 12:00 p.m. ET, Dublin, Ireland

This line opened Florida State -13.5 at several books, so I feel bad recommending it at a worse price, but I think we’re OK as it’s still above the semi-key number of 10. I certainly wouldn’t take it at single digits and it’s also a hard pass at 10.

The Seminoles are obviously the better team and also the more public team, so there’s no doubt this was going to be a double-digit spread on a neutral field (and I’m only speculating here, but I’m assuming their fans will travel well compared to Tech).

But we feel this line is too high for a couple of reasons. The main one for me is that this is DJ Uiagalelei’s debut. That name should be familiar even to casual CFB fans as he’s the poster child of today’s journeyman QB. He was the heir apparent to Trevor Lawrence at Clemson from 2020-2022 and played last season at Oregon State before transferring to FSU for his final year of eligibility. I’ve never been a big fan. Expect a mediocre debut from him, even against a Tech defense that allowed 449.3 yards per game last season.

That should keep the Yellow Jackets close throughout as they have a solid offensive line (to counteract one of FSU’s strengths) and return QB Haynes King, who threw for 2,842 yards and 27 TDs last season, which is comparable to Uiagalelei, as well as RB Jamal Haynes and WR Eric Singleton Jr.

This isn’t the mismatch many people expect from a ranked vs. unranked matchup, so we believe we’re getting more than enough points to get the cash.

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