The first Vegas book out of the gate with college football lines on the top 200 or so games is the one posted at The Golden Nugget.
Glancing through there, it’s a mixed bag for Georgia (favored against Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia Tech; underdog against Florida and Auburn), not promising for South Carolina (favored against Tennessee; getting points against Auburn, Alabama, Arkansas and Florida) and weirdly inconsistent as to Auburn (favored against all three East opponents and LSU; even money with Mississippi; underdogs to Arkansas and Alabama).
Alabama is favored in every game on the board, including Florida by three.
And it’s not looking good for the Vols, who are underdogs in six games (four by a TD or more). Which means this only adds insult to injury:
… Professional sports bettor and Two-Time defending Hilton Champion, Fezzik posted that he “smacked in twelve anti-Tennessee Vols bets”. He shared three of those bets as he played SEC rivals Georgia -7, Florida -8 and Alabama -8.5 against the Volunteers.
Oof.
It doesn’t sound like he was the only one thinking like that.
No, the most exciting and important college sports happening of the summer occurred on June 11. On that day Golden Nugget race and sports book director Tony Miller put nearly 200 college football games on his betting board. Despite capping wagers at $1,000 and limiting bettors to three bets at a time, Miller says the Nugget’s handle reached six figures within the first hour. By day’s end, Miller had taken about $150,000 in wagers.
Most of the money that poured in that first day came from “sharps” (i.e. professional bettors), and much of the action focused on three teams. “We got a lot of anti-Tennessee money, and a lot of people like Texas A&M and Oregon,” Miller says.
Not so coincidentally, one of the biggest line moves centered on a Sept. 11 matchup between Oregon and Tennessee. The visiting Ducks were installed as a 3-point favorite, but when bettors loaded up on Oregon, Miller pushed the number to 6 even though Ducks QB Jeremiah Masoli was kicked off the team this month after repeated run-ins with the law.
Get The Picture 
We will learn an awful lot about UT from the Oregon-UT game.
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I bet CFB every week, and have for decades, but I have never bet but one game before summer practice, the Boise St/UGA opener. And I bet it harder than I have ever bet any other game, I just knew the whole nation was underestimating Schock.
I see several games that look attractive based on my pre-season assessment, but those are as useless as pre-season polls. The time to bet games is after the one’s played the prior week.
Going into last year Boise led the nation in beating the spread for the previous 10 year period at 61%. Many UGA fans complain about the Dawgs underachieving but UGA is around 56% for that same period. For a bettor, winning 55% of your bets (on equal amounts) is break even. So if a Dawg fan had bet $100 per game on UGA to cover for the past 10 years they would be about even, although they would have sworn at the TV hundreds of times, and seen their blood pressure spike to dangerous levels. Since running up the score isn’t CMR’s modus operandi, he isn’t a favorite of many national betters (especially when favored by double digits), but he has covered enough to rank UGA in the upper tier.
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Yes, but unfortunately, we have been picked to lose a lot of games over the last 10 years for the # 11 program in the nation in 1-A Football Wins All-Time. And, we have had 8 games against really lousy teams that we lost. In addition in the big games against teams ranked in the Top 10 of the Final AP Poll, we have won only 3 of the 11 games.
Look at this up-coming season, for example.
Underdog to Florida.
Underdog to Auburn.
South Carolina game not listed.
Arkansas we have 44 % chance to not cover only 3 points.
We have been largely inconsistent in the Coach Richt Era. For example the season we knocked the lid off the UGA program beating # 4 Tennessee vols, we lost to Boston College who with the win got ranked ahead of us when we scored 16 points, lost to South Carolina when we scored 9 points, lost to Florida when we scored 10 points, and lost to Auburn when we scored 17 points.
The 1 persistent constant about the Coach Richt Era is that we have had the Average # 52 Total Offense all 9 years – not in the Top 50 Offenses. It’s hard to cover bets against the really good teams and against the really bad teams, when you do not have an offense, and it has nothing to do with Coach Richt not wanting to run up the score. The offense has consistently not been good for 9 years now and counting.
# 11 team All-Time in 1-A wins should not have had the average not even in the Top 50 Total Offense 9 years of the Coach Richt Era. We are 2 games under against Top 25 Final AP Poll teams, 8 games under against Top 10 Final AP Poll teams and in addition have lost 8 games against teams not ranked in the Top 25 Final AP Poll in the 9 years of the Coach Richt Era because of our Offense. 38 games we have played in the 9 years of the Coach Richt Era where we did not score more than 2 touchdowns and we lost 27 of those 38.
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