College Football Picks:

While the NFL is having an outlier season in terms of the high cover rate from underdogs, college football seems to more or less be business as usual. Underdogs are covering in FBS games at a rate of 52% per Killer Sports, which is a tad on the high side, but nothing outlandish. The Under is also coming in at a little over 51%.

The inherent variance of college football and the sheer number of games combine to produce a good number of betting opportunities week in and week out, but the market should be tightening up a bit with more data points and more customer data from the sportsbooks. But, we’ve also got a lot of research and a lot of tools at our disposal in hopes of finding the games that aren’t quite lined properly. That’s what I’m in search of this week.

 

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Here are my Week 6 College Football Picks:

Army Black Knights (-12, 50.5) at Tulsa Golden Hurricane

Saturday, Noon ET (ESPNU)

Army and Tulsa battle it out with an early kickoff in Oklahoma in an AAC matchup. It is still weird to think of Army being in a conference, but they’re 3-0 in that conference already and are rolling right along. I expect them to continue rolling right along.

Tulsa had no hopes of keeping up with North Texas last week, as the Mean Green shredded them through the air with 439 passing yards on just 34 attempts and 22 completions. Oh, and for good measure, the Mean Green had 26 carries for 179 yards, so that’s a nice 6.9 yards per carry.

The Golden Hurricane offense is bad and so is the defense. Tulsa has mustered just 5.09 yards per play against FBS opponents and only had 4.6 YPP against a bad North Texas defense last week. The defense is giving up over six yards per play, so this is one of the bigger YPP discrepancies in the nation. Per Brian Fremeau at BCF Toys, Tulsa’s -2.01 YPP diff ranks 113th.

Army’s YPP diff of +2.9 ranks ninth. Not bad for a team that runs the football with the frequency that the Black Knights do, which limits the ability for explosives through the air.

I don’t see Tulsa providing much resistance on defense and the offense isn’t good enough with the limited number of possessions in service academy games to keep pace.

Pick: Army -12

SMU Mustangs at Louisville Cardinals (-7, 56.5)

Saturday, Noon ET (ESPN)

The ACC was one of the conferences I wrote up for our 2024 College Football Betting Guide. In that publication, I noted the issues that SMU has had with Power Four competition. Maybe they’ve thrown that monkey off of their backs with the wins over TCU and Florida State, but they were 0-3 last season and 0-2 in 2022, along with losses to Cincinnati, UCF, and BYU, who all joined the Big 12 for 2023.

I’m not sure how good TCU is and I know that Florida State isn’t any good. I think Louisville is good. And the Cardinals got a big weapon back in Caullin Lacy, the South Alabama transfer who will play on Sundays at the next level. Lacy had five catches for 71 yards against Notre Dame and joined Ja’Corey Brooks, the Alabama transfer who has been QB Tyler Shough’s top target.

I think this passing game got a lot more dangerous. Isaac Brown has 8.4 yards per carry and each of the top three backs for Louisville has been able to find a lot of openings. I don’t really know how good SMU’s defense is. Recently, they’ve just forced a lot of turnovers and capitalized on them.

Louisville won the box score against Notre Dame, but turned it over on downs four times. A good offensive head coach like Jeff Brohm should be able to figure those things out. I fully expect a bounce back from Louisville here. This is also one of my biggest power ratings overlays of the week, as I have not bumped SMU much for the last two weeks and had Louisville pretty high coming into the season.

Either it plays out or I make some big adjustments, but I do think Louisville is worthy of a look here as the best opponent SMU has played to this point by a good margin.

Pick: Louisville -7

Colorado State Rams at Oregon State Beavers (-11, 47.5)

6:30 p.m. ET (The CW Network)

In between reruns of Dawson’s Creek and One Tree Hill, you can watch some quasi Mountain West football, as Oregon State, playing a Mountain West schedule as an orphaned former Pac-12 member, welcomes Colorado State to Corvallis. Except for an ugly data point against a hyper-focused rival in Oregon, the Beavers have played really well. That includes a rather dominant win over Purdue, as OSU held the ball for over 40 minutes and racked up 341 yards on the ground.

Oregon State’s run defense was a little bit leaky in that game, so that would be the concern in this one. The game state and expectation for me is that the Rams will have to throw because they’re trailing and Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi, who alleged turned down quite a few zeroes to leave Fort Collins, has not played very well. He’s got a 60.4% completion rate with a 2/4 TD/INT ratio. 

Oregon State came into this week with over 1,000 rushing yards, joining 20 other teams. Twelve of those teams had done so with five games under their belts. The Beavers have done it with four and they have a dual-threat QB in Gevani McCoy with a 64.8% completion rate and 6.4 yards per carry.

There is still Pac-12 level talent on this OSU roster. In the trenches. On defense. At the skill positions. Colorado State has lower-tier Mountain West talent and that’s why this line indicates a mismatch. I tend to agree. Even though we’ve seen Colorado State money trickle in throughout the week, the Beavers are off of a bye and I have this one lined 17.5, so I like the spot and where my power ratings have the game.

Pick: Oregon State -11

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