College Football Picks
Before even getting to Saturday, it’s been a busy week of college football with nine weekday games. Going forward, just like the Week 11 college football picks, you don’t have to wait long to be able to hit submit on some CFB bets. We have weekday MACtion next week plus more Thursday and Friday games.
But, I’m looking at the Saturday slate now after previewing all of the weekday games over the course of the last few days. Saturday’s slate gives us a lot more to work with based on the number of games and hopefully things will go as planned with the games that we all like the most.
These are my favorite Week 11 college football picks, but we have many others. You can check out our Week 11 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 11 College Football Picks:
Odds as of Wednesday, November 5, 4:10 p.m. PT
Florida (-3, 43.5) vs. Kentucky
7:30 p.m. ET
It has been a rough season for Florida and it is totally fair to wonder how plugged in this team still is with an interim head coach in Billy Gonzales and probably a lot of transfer portal interest for a talented roster. I thought they had a good effort in Jacksonville against Georgia, even if the game probably should have ended 31-20 instead of 24-20. Kentucky had a good effort of their own in beating Auburn and sealing Hugh Freeze’s fate.
Kentucky’s offense has looked a bit more promising with freshman Cutter Boley, but he’s still thrown seven interceptions and taken 17 sacks since taking over the job from Zach Calzada. Kentucky is only rushing for 3.8 yards per carry this season and hasn’t generated a ton of explosive plays in the passing game, ranking tied for 112th in pass plays of 20+ yards.
The Florida defense is still a very stout unit. According to Sagarin, Florida has played the hardest strength of schedule in the nation. Kentucky is fifth, so they’ve had their share of tough opponents, too, but I think that number is a little bit inflated, as Tennessee, Texas, and South Carolina are probably not as good as their rankings have shown.
Four of Florida’s five losses have been to top-five teams at the time that they played – LSU, Miami, Texas A&M, Georgia, and while Miami and LSU are not at that level anymore, it’s still been much tougher sledding for the Gators. And it’s tough with Ole Miss and Tennessee coming up the next two weeks. For a team desperate for any win they can get, you have to think that they feel like this is a good opportunity. As rough as this season has been for Florida, they’re still better than Kentucky in EPA/play on offense and defense and points per drive allowed.
Pick: Florida -3
UNLV (-4.5, 62) at Colorado State
9:30 p.m. ET
I understand the negative sentiment about UNLV going outdoors to play a night game in a chilly climate like Fort Collins. After all, they looked awful on offense in Laramie earlier this season in some subpar conditions. But, the weather will be clear and the winds will die down throughout the day for this one.
Money has hit the board on Colorado State here and I don’t really get it. This is a terrible football team that has beaten one FBS team, fired its head coach, and has not gotten much from Jackson Brousseau or Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi at QB. UNLV obviously has plenty of problems of their own, especially on defense, where they rank 116th in the nation with 2.48 points per drive allowed, but Colorado State has allowed 2.33 PPD. It’s just that UNLV is better, so the attention is more focused on them.
The Rebels have also scored 2.42 PPD, which ranks 26th in the nation, while Colorado State has scored just 1.49, which ranks 93rd. UNLV at least has a top-45 offense in EPA/play to go with their bad defense. Colorado State is just bad on both sides of the ball. The Rams have an interim head coach, no chance at a bowl game (unless they somehow go 4-0 the rest of the way) and have scored 12 points in their last seven quarters. There’s probably a pretty high quit level in this team right now.
Darius Curry, a 5-foot-10 freshman from Long Beach, may get the start here. While Anthony Colandrea struggled in Laramie, it sure is fair to wonder what a Long Beach native who played high school ball at Long Beach Poly will do on a cool night.
Pick: UNLV -4.5
San Diego State (-7, 50.5) at Hawaii
11 p.m. ET
Staying in the Mountain West, I’ll go to the “chase game” in Honolulu. I faded San Diego State last week in what was expected to be a low-scoring game with Wyoming getting 10.5. The low-scoring game part was right, but so was -10.5, as the Aztecs won by 17.
This week, I’m back on the horse, as the same concerns I had about SDSU last week are magnified. The Aztecs have played one of the worst sets of opposing offenses this season. I’m talking bottom-five level. Moreover, they haven’t played a passing offense with a pulse. Like at any point. Now they draw Micah Alejado and a really good Hawaii air assault.
I don’t really know how good the Aztecs offense is, and Hawaii’s defense has had its problems, but the Aztecs are averaging 6.6 yards per play in conference games. Hawaii is averaging 6.2. The Rainbow Warriors could really struggle defensively in this matchup, but I do think that their offense is able to do some things. I already took Hawaii +7 earlier in the week and talked about it on the College Football Podcast with Tim Murray.
Now I’m taking the Over 50.5 as well. There’s a correlation here in that Hawaii probably does need a higher-scoring environment to have a really good chance at covering 7 and I believe that’s exactly what they’ll wind up getting.
Pick: Over 50.5
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