College Football Handicapping Articles

NCAA Football Predictions: Championship Week Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 11/29/2021

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Opening Line Report: Championship Weekend edition. I cannot wait for this weekend’s action, and I’ve taken the liberty to run through each one of the 10 games on the board to give you an idea of who might be worth backing this weekend. Let’s finish the college football “regular-season” strong and build some momentum as we head into my favorite time of the year, Bowl Season.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 13 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 11/22/2021

Ladies and gentlemen, we have made it. We’ve made it to the final regular-season week of the college football season. And to say it is a bit sad would be an understatement. We’ve seen pretty much everything you can think of from blown leads, to big comebacks, to crazy catches and runs, to blown calls and poor officiating. We’ve seen “good teams” majorly underperform, and we’ve seen “afterthoughts” do damage and have great seasons.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 12 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 11/16/2021

We have reached the penultimate week of the college football season, and we’ve witnessed more twists, turns, and uncertainty than I can remember seeing in any season over the last handful of years. These final two weeks offer teams that are either 4-6 or 5-5 two final chances to win out and become bowl eligible. There are plenty of spots where motivation will be a deciding factor in the outcome, and it’s imperative that you find the edge and be on the right side.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 11
by Chris Vasile - 11/10/2021

I mentioned this last week, but I have the urge to mention it again. Besides winning bets and making money, there is nothing more satisfying than handicapping a game, expecting it to go a certain way and then watching that exact scenario play out.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 11 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 11/8/2021

I don’t know about you, but I must have missed the memo before last weekend that informed us bettors to prepare for an absolute wild weekend of football. The upsets yesterday in the NFL were insane, but it all started on Saturday when eight of the top-25 teams in college football lost outright.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 10
by Chris Vasile - 11/4/2021

I wrote about this earlier in the season, but sometimes the best bet you can make is the one you don’t place. In this instance, I was so confident last week that UTEP getting double-digit points was a gift and that FAU was not equipped to cover that spread against a good offensive team. I eventually talked myself out of betting UTEP. And low and behold, they covered. I’m not mad that I didn’t win the bet. I am happy that the process and research that went into the game was validated and that I am on the right track with this Florida Atlantic team.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 10 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 11/2/2021

For as long as I can remember – at least during the era of the College Football Playoff – there has always been a trio of teams that were head and shoulders above the rest. How they were ranked heading into the semi-finals was depending on their schedule, but you knew for the most part which bowl game teams were going to land in.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 9
by Chris Vasile - 10/27/2021

I’m still a little bit baffled by this Florida Atlantic team. The whole purpose of this article was to help specialize by following one team and understand the ebbs and flows and show that it’s possible to make money following one specific team and/or conference. The Owls are doing their very best to disprove that theory, and I’m a little annoyed that the results have not been better.

Biggest Comebacks in College Football History
by Mike Pruitt - 10/26/2021

There aren’t many other sporting events in the United States that carry the amount or type of energy that a college football game does. A lot of this is because student sections are large, and these kids have been playing beer pong with Aristocrap vodka since 7 a.m. This is a level of energy that I think we all wish we still had. I am not saying I ever want to live that life, again, but you have to respect it.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 9 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 10/25/2021

There are around four games left in the regular season for most teams, and now is the time that teams start to get desperate for wins to reach the coveted six-win mark and earn a bowl bid. With that information, it’s time to start paying close attention to a team’s motivation and bet accordingly. A team that is down and out at say, 2-5 or 3-4, may not give that extra effort depending on who they are playing and how disappointing the season has been.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 8
by Chris Vasile - 10/20/2021

As we enter Week 8 of the College Football season, it’s now time for Florida Atlantic to put up or shut up. The Owls have been the model of inconsistency this season as they have a middling 3-3 record and have won all three games at home while getting destroyed in all three games on the road. It has been hard to back the Owls this year as their play is so sporadic.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 8 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 10/18/2021

Last week, before the real rankings came out, I went on record to list Georgia, Iowa, Cincinnati, and Michigan as the top-four teams in the country. Then the standings came out, and I was nearly spot-on, with the committee choosing to place Oklahoma in the four-hole instead of Michigan. That’s fine and dandy. However, once again, the top-four is going to be shaken up as No. 2 Iowa laid an egg on their home soil and lost outright to the Purdue Boilermakers as 11.5-point favorites.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 7 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 10/11/2021

I told you last week that the only thing scary about October is when ranked teams have to take on unranked opponents. It wasn’t a complete Friday the 13th massacre, but No. 1 Alabama went on the road to Kyle Field and lost to unranked Texas A&M as 18.5-point favorites. Fourth-ranked Penn State went to Kinnick Stadium to tangle with No. 3 Iowa and fell three points short in what was surprisingly a great game from start to finish.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 6
by Chris Vasile - 10/7/2021

If you aren’t familiar with the “zig-zag” theory in sports betting, I suggest looking it up. It’s most commonly used in the NBA Playoffs as the theory states to take exactly the opposite of what happened in the previous game. For example, if the underdog covered in Game 1, the favorite would be the play to cover in Game 2. In football, the Zig-Zag theory can hold water, but it’s a lot harder to predict as the games are weekly not every other day. I’ve been zigging and zagging on the Owls for over five weeks now, and we’ve made little progress.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 6 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 10/4/2021

If you’re a kid or a parent with a kid, the first thing you probably think of when October rolls around is Halloween. Decorating the house, candy, trick or treating and scary movies. What a wonderful time. If you’re a ranked team when October rolls around, you are probably not thinking about Halloween, but you should be very scared of what lies ahead. Look at Week 5 as a whole. No. 3 Oregon lost, No. 8 Arkansas lost, No. 9 Notre Dame lost, No. 10 Florida lost, No. 20 UCLA lost, and No. 21 Baylor lost.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 5
by Chris Vasile - 9/30/2021

Have you ever bet on a game and saw the first few minutes of action and thought that your bet was toast after a few plays or minutes of action? That was me last weekend when I decided to bet on Florida Atlantic to not only cover the spread but beat Air Force outright. The Owls got the ball first and took a delay of game penalty before they even snapped the ball and then proceeded to lose seven yards on that drive. Three plays in, and I knew my bet was toast. Air Force went down and scored on the next two possession, and just like that it was 14-0 and I was able to find something else to do with my time. I will be the first to tell you it was a dud of a pick, and we are going to do better this week.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 5 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 9/27/2021

For the teams that should have easily beaten their opponents last week, it was rather straightforward. No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Georgia combined to beat their foes by 125-14. Georgia won 62-0, and Alabama snuck by with a 63-14 win. No. 3 Oregon made light work of Arizona, while No. 4 Oklahoma was given all they could handle against a plucky West Virginia team and barely escaped with a 16-13 win.

NCAA Football Mid-Major Free Betting Picks: Florida Atlantic Owls Week 4
by Chris Vasile - 9/23/2021

If you’ve been in the sports betting industry as long as I have, you learn a few things in the process. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that sometimes the best bet you can make is to not make a bet at all. Take last week’s FAU game for example. I could have done a 900-word piece on why Florida Atlantic was going to thrash an FCS opponent; Fordham, and it would have sounded fine and dandy on paper.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 4 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 9/20/2021

It was a rather straightforward week in College Football over the weekend, with most ranked teams handling their business and coming away with a win. Three games featured two ranked opponents, so, rightfully, someone had to lose. The only game that a ranked team lost to an unranked foe was the UCLA/Fresno State game in which No. 13 UCLA lost, 40-37. The top four teams in the country remain unchanged with just one small tweak – Oregon moved up from No. 4 to No. 3, and the Oklahoma Sooners fell from No. 3 to No. 4.

NCAA Football Predictions: Week 3 Opening Line Report and Picks
by Chris Vasile - 9/13/2021

Depending on which school you go to, which school you went to, or which school you actively cheer for, you’ll have a major bias towards your team and in particular when it comes to your team and their chances at getting into the College Football Playoffs. If you, like myself, are from Canada and don’t really have a “favorite team” or alma mater to cheer for, you should feel happy that Week 2 was a big win for the “we want different teams in the College Football Playoff” cheering section.