Week 9 College Football: Sam Houston State vs. FIU

Tuesday night is a big one in the sports world. Not only do we get the start of the 2024-25 NBA season, but we also get two more Conference USA college football clashes. Week 9 kicks off with Sam Houston State vs. FIU and UTEP vs. Louisiana Tech. Some Monday morning line movement in one of the games feels like a notable development and let’s talk about that before getting to the other one.

For all of this week’s college football insights, refer to our College Football Week 9 Hub.

 

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Sam Houston State Bearkats (-5.5, 46.5) at FIU Panthers

7:30 p.m. ET (ESPNU)

Line movement on bad teams in small-conference games should always be taken under consideration and we have some here. FIU started the week as high as +8.5 at DraftKings, but they’ve taken some pretty one-sided money to this point to get down to 5.5. Circa opened 6 and got hit up to 7 before coming back down to mirror the market at 5.5.

This is not a game high on anybody’s radar, so the nature of this type of line move is always going to be sharper in nature. FIU was pretty popular last week after a strong showing against Liberty the week prior. The Panthers took the Flames to the wire and you could argue that they should have won the game.

Last week, they got bumped up all the way to -7 on the road at UTEP and lost the game outright, picking up just 287 yards of offense. One of FIU’s TDs came off a short field thanks to a blocked punt and that was the only TD drive Keyone Jenkins led before getting hurt. He had two drives end in punts and threw a pick in the other three.

With backup Amari Jones, FIU had another short, eight-yard TD drive off of an interception. Jenkins is expected to play this week, and he is the better option with a 10/6 TD/INT ratio and a 63.2% completion rate.

Sam Houston State lost as a short favorite to Western Kentucky last week, so the market may be discrediting them a little bit, but they do only need one win for bowl eligibility and now need to bank dubs to get back in the conference standings and have a shot at playing for the conference title. They’re going to need some help, but they can help themselves later in the year with games against Jacksonville State and Liberty.

This is still an offensively-challenged Bearkats bunch that has only mustered 5.55 yards per play and 5.58 YPP in league action, but they do have over six yards per play in two games this month. FIU only has 4.9 YPP against conference foes and 5.1 YPP this month.

SHSU is also the better defense, allowing 4.6 YPP in three conference games, while FIU has allowed 5.4. My line on this game is Sam Houston -7.5, so closer to where it was before the market seemingly adjusted to the positive news about Jenkins. I still think Sam Houston is clearly the better team and last week’s game against WKU was closer than the final score indicated.

Pick: Sam Houston State -5.5

Other Tuesday Game

UTEP Miners at Louisiana Tech Bulldogs (-7, 50): CBS Sports Network gets this 8 p.m. ET kickoff in Ruston between a couple of bad football teams. At least UTEP has an excuse, as first-year head coach Scotty Walden is making some sweeping changes. Louisiana Tech may be parting ways with Sonny Cumbie at season’s end and the program has been scuffling for a while.

Turnovers had a lot to do with UTEP’s first win, as FIU threw four interceptions. Both teams traded short TD drives throughout the game, so it was a little bit misleading to go Over the total. Last week’s LA Tech game was 24-24 going to overtime, so that was very close to the closing total of 48 or 49.

Louisiana Tech actually has a top-20 defense by yards per play. Both teams stink offensively. I think 50 is a tad rich for this total.

Pick: Under 50

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