Hope springs eternal for college football teams in the spring. Coaches rave about spring practice performances and talk about how special of a year it is going to be. When the game gets between the lines against a different opponent, though, things can change in a hurry.
Generally speaking, betting markets are skewed towards overs. It is much easier in the minds of most recreational players to bet that something will happen as opposed to something that will NOT happen. While gamblers are a pessimistic lot by nature, their wagers certainly don’t reflect it.
Subconsciously, maybe we’re all just out there trying to hope for the best-case scenario, but the reality is that a lot of teams will fall short of expectations. It could be the result of an injury, a toxic locker room, an insurmountable schedule, or just falling on the wrong side of Lady Luck, but it will happen to several college football teams this season.
With 130 teams to line from a season win total standpoint, the oddsmakers cannot get every team right. Bettors also have a wide range of opinions and will bet accordingly with those thoughts. Your thoughts may be different. Your thoughts may be the same. The college football win total market creates ample opportunity to take a stand and back up your hard work and research.
Just to keep it easy for the readers, I’ve separated my favorite season win total picks into two different articles. This will be a look at my favorite UNDER season win total bets.
For my top OVER season win total bets, you can check those out by clicking the link.
The odds are from DraftKings Sportsbook.
The Process
I put together Power Ratings every summer in college football to rank the teams and to also create spreads for their games. With the Power Ratings, the schedule, and the help of my good friend Josh Spaunhorst, whose Excel skills came in very handy, I put together a spreadsheet with the expected number of wins for each team.
By tabulating the expected wins from each game, we can attack the season win total markets and attempt to find some good wagers before the games kick off. The Spread to Expected Wins numbers that I have may be different from what others have, in that mine may be a little bit dated, but it doesn’t really alter the projection a ton and doesn’t alter the picks that much, as I’m looking for a good-sized overlay for making my picks.
My Google Sheet has all of the season win total numbers and you can check that out here.
These picks are based on both my win total projections and also a qualitative analysis of the team. These are ranked by win total.
Best Bets for College Football Season Win Total Unders
Marshall Thundering Herd Under 8.5
My projections put Marshall down for 7.72 in the first season without longtime head coach Doc Holliday. Marshall seems to have done well plucking Charles Huff from the staff of Nick Saban, a head coach that you may have heard of before, but I do wonder about the drastic change from a long-tenured coach to somebody that will want to do things differently.
Marshall went 7-3 last year in the pandemic-shortened season and only allowed 13 points per game, but played a remarkably pathetic set of offenses and then lost three straight to end the season. Grant Wells was awful down the stretch as well.
Marshall does have a reasonable schedule, but will go to Appalachian State and play UAB at home in an underdog role. The Herd also draws the Navy triple-option in Huff’s first game. While I’m not high on Navy, that is a tough assignment. While I do have Marshall favored in nine of their 12 games, the margin for error looks pretty slim with a win total this high.
Oklahoma State Cowboys Under 8
I guess we could consider this one my bold call. This is about the biggest disparity on the negative side for me, with a projection of 6.99 wins for Mike Gundy’s bunch. To me, this is a program going in the wrong direction. Players like Chuba Hubbard spoke out against Gundy and some of his off-color comments in the past and it seemed to cast a dark cloud over the program.
Furthermore, I just don’t love the talent level of this team. Spencer Sanders is a fine player, but the Cowboys are trending downward offensively and have been for several years now. This is a team that has won with defense, which is a pretty big ask in this conference.
While I do still give Oklahoma State some respect, as a road favorite at Boise State, road games at Texas, Iowa State, and West Virginia all look very challenging. Bedlam will see the Cowboys as a two-touchdown dog in Stillwater. A slip-up here or there, like in a coin flip against TCU or if the Cowboys become one of Kansas State’s upset victims, and this team will have a very hard time getting to 8.
If nothing else, they have to win 9 games to beat me. Given the dog roles at Texas, Iowa State, and at home against Oklahoma, I’m not sure that they can do better than 8.
Tennessee Volunteers Under 6
For some reason, DraftKings did not have Tennessee listed at time of writing, so this is from FanDuel Sportsbook.
This one is less about the projection and more about the situation. Tennessee is projected for 5.22 wins for me, so that is quite a bit lower than the 6 number. I hate the hire of Josh Heupel. UCF did have to deal with the injury to McKenzie Milton and the departure of Scott Frost, but Heupel took that team in the wrong direction.
Many will say that the only direction for Tennessee is up, after enduring the failed Jeremy Pruitt era, but I don’t think Heupel is a step up at all. In fact, I think he’s a step down.
This is not a team blessed with a lot of talent and there are a lot of new pieces on both sides of the ball in a season in which roster turnover is mostly at a minimum, with the exception of the transfer portal.
My numbers have Tennessee a clear home underdog against Pitt, to go along with dog roles at Florida, Missouri, Alabama, and Kentucky, not to mention another home dog role against Ole Miss and another against Georgia. Maybe it’s just easier to say that Tennessee is only favored over Bowling Green, Tennessee Tech, South Carolina, South Alabama, and Vanderbilt. That gets you to five wins.
Where do the other two come from?
I don’t think they do.
Colorado Buffaloes Under 4.5
Remember when we all looked at the late hire of Karl Dorrell and wondered what Colorado was doing? Then the Buffaloes got off to a 4-0 start with wins over UCLA, Stanford, San Diego State, and Arizona last year and we all felt like morons.
Well, we came to find out that those teams weren’t very good and that Colorado wound up getting outscored on the season anyway. Coming into this season, the Buffaloes draw a very difficult schedule. They’ll get both Oregon and Washington from the North Division, along with all of their usual South Division foes. They’ll be a huge dog to Texas A&M on a “neutral” field in Denver, so maybe my +19 line should be more like +17.5 or so, but that wouldn’t change the projection in a big way.
Colorado looks to only be favored in three games by my count and will be a double digit dog five times, including two games at home, plus the A&M game close to home.
My projections on UCLA and Cal even look a little low and that’s not enough to give Colorado the benefit of the doubt.