Early Point Spreads You Should Know

The leader in picking college football games, CollegeFootballPoll.com, has released its MAC, Big East and Pac10 previews. I don’t believe there’s a more accurate operation out there for setting lines and picking W/L records in college football. Sure, I love to read the hundreds of previews throughout the year, but when it comes down to game time, I’m checking the lines set by CFP’s computers.*

Not to say that I’m at all surprised, but Penn State is favored by relatively comfortable margins in three games released. The Lions are early 2.72-point favorites against the Beavers in week two, Syracuse is an early 25.74-point underdog in the Carrier Dome, while in-state rival Temple is an early 15.04 underdog for the Owls’ visit to Beaver Stadium in week four.

The only one of those games I'm a little concerned about is Oregon State. Now, I fully believe Penn State will win it, but I also agree with the CFP computers that it could be a very close game. I was really surprised with the Syracuse line. The Orange(men) won't go to a bowl game, not even close. But for CFP to set a line larger than 25 points, the Syracuse faithful should start bracing themselves for an ugly afternoon. This could set up a very interesting story line when the Fighting Illini come to town and Penn State is sitting pretty at 4-0.

*CFP has been freakishly accurate since its inception in 1993. From CFP: “The computer has picked the winner in 74.7% of all games played since 1993 (7,828-2,645) while beating the spread in 54.2% of those games (5,221-4,419)... The computer has predicted the national title match-up three times (1993, 1998 and 2005), and at least one contestant every year except 1994, 1997, 2001 and 2006. The team it picked to win the title did so three times (1993, 1998, and 1999), and lost in the title game four times (2000, 2003, 2004, 2005).” Yeah, I’d call that freakish.