SPORTS WAGERS
Kansas State +13 over Arkansas
Kansas State (6-6) has a very turbulent past in recent bowl games. The Wildcats have won just two of their last seven bowl games but the experience of skipper Bill Snyder is always an intangible worth considering. The Wildcats are not as weak in bowl games as it appears. K-State has been the victim of harsh luck and miraculous circumstances. Beginning with a rally against Ohio State in the 2004 Fiesta Bowl to some late heroics in a loss in the inaugural Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium to last year’s five-point loss to UCLA in the Alamo Bowl, the Wildcats are yet another snake-bitten dog. This is a football team that started off 3-0 this season and then embarked on a six-game skid against some of the Big 12’s best teams. Against TCU, Oklahoma State and Baylor, the Wildcats lost by just a combined 16 points when they were spotted a touchdown or more in each of these respective games. The blemishes on K-State’s resume are a 55-0 debacle they suffered in Manhattan against Oklahoma and a hideous road loss at Texas the following week. However, K-State found a way to finish strong and rattle off three straight wins to get into the Liberty Bowl. While these victories were not attained against premier opposition, it is certainly a testament to good coaching and resolve on the ‘Cats to not abandon their season as a whole. Now they have a chance to finish with a winning record after falling to as low as 3-6. K-State in the underdog role has so much more appeal taking back double digits than the Razorbacks do as the chalk spotting double-digits.
Arkansas (7-5) is one of the most enigmatic teams one can back. The Hogs were regarded by many as a dark horse to win the SEC West in 2015 and perhaps even vie for a College Football Playoff berth. If nothing else, many called for Arkansas to secure a New Years’ Six Bowl Berth and yet the Razorbacks barely managed to acquire bowl eligibility. Arkansas would start off the year 2-4 and then go 5-1 down the backstretch to secure a bowl berth. Most notably, the Hogs lost outright to Toledo as a 22½-point favorite and would follow that up the very next week with another straight up loss to Texas Tech as a 9½-point favorite. Even more disturbing was that both those losses were in Arkansas. Down the stretch, we saw the Hogs favored by 37 against Tennessee-Martin and by six points against Mississippi State. The Hogs would go 1-1 in that crop but 0-2 against the spread. It is also worth mentioning that two of Arkansas’ five final wins were settled in overtime against underachievers like Ole Miss and Auburn. It really boils down to which Arkansas team shows up but regardless of that, we’re extremely uneasy backing a club that finds itself in dogfights week in and week out against moderately talented football teams. Kansas State is no Tennessee-Martin or an assailed Missouri or LSU and at the end of the day, we do not trust the Hogs to cover a double-digit margin with a week off, let alone a month off.
Arizona State +100 over West Virginia
Outside of an impressive 44-0 shutout against Georgia Southern to open the season, the Mountaineers have no impressive victories. When pitted against a four-game slate of the Big 12’s best teams (Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Baylor and TCU), the Mountaineers were hammered, losing all four while being outscored 151-98. This is a team that was lit up by Baylor for 62 points and that gave up 24 or more points in six contests. WVU looked dominant against teams like Texas, Kansas, Iowa State, Maryland and Liberty University. We’ll cast aside a rout of an FCS opponent like Liberty, as the match was a tune-up game for the Mountaineers and a way to pad their schedule so we won’t discuss that meaningless victory. The other four, Texas, Kansas, Iowa State and Maryland all failed to make a bowl game and combined to win 10 games on the season. Outside of the GSU victory, the Mountaineers had just one victory over an FBS team with a winning-record. That came against Texas Tech, a team whose defense is so accommodating that even a Pop Warner team would be able to find the end zone against them. Even with the win, WVU had to squeak that one out, winning 31-26 and barely surviving the Red Raiders’ onslaught. We by no means will buy in to the rhetoric that surrounds the Mountaineers and their vaunted spread offense, as Arizona State is a problem, meaning they won’t let you run on them.
The issue for the Sun Devils is their pass defense, as it is atrocious. As a result, the Sun Devils have one of the worst defenses in America in scoring, but they nonetheless force teams to be one-dimensional. West Virginia likes to sustain balanced attacks, as they often get their skill players in space on screens and draws and then try to launch one deep when defenses cheat up. We don’t know if this blueprint will find success, as the Sun Devils will let you throw all over them but never run. In any event, the Sun Devils can score points and they remind us a lot of the Texas Tech team that West Virginia had a donnybrook with in Morgantown in early November. We trust the true colors of West Virginia will be revealed when they go against a potent football team that can readily expose their weaknesses. West Virginia took advantage of pipsqueak football teams but that does not apply to Arizona State. The Sun Devils navigated a gauntlet, playing in one of the premiere divisions in all of football, the Pac-12 South. We’d like to see West Virginia face USC, Utah, UCLA, California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and Washington State and make it through that docket with a .500 record. We highly doubt that they could. Not only do we get the better team without spotting anything, we get them in the desert in front of a partisan crowd.
TCU -104 over Oregon
The name Oregon excites many as they have bolstered a reputation for formulating innovative offensive strategies and putting up crooked numbers in the process. Oregon (9-3) has seemingly got their mojo back after winning six in a row and seven of its past eight games. Long forgotten is the 62-20 drubbing that Utah hung on the Ducks back in October. The market loves teams that scores big points and racks up massive yardage. We do too when that team is legit and plays defense but that’s the not the case with the Ducks.
We saw another hot team enter last year’s Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl with a similar mystique and attraction about them that is similar to the brand of hype that has been generated with the resurgent Oregon Ducks. That team was the Ole Miss Rebels. That Rebels squad was backed by many facing this same TCU team that features the combination of quarterback Trevone Boykin and elite wide-out Josh Doctson. This duo has accounted for a plethora of scores over the last two seasons in particular and they themselves were able to dissect the vaunted “Landshark” defense that was poised to give the Horned Frogs fits in the aforementioned encounter. TCU defeated Ole Miss, 42-3.
Now, it’s Oregon’s offense against TCU’s defense. While TCU’s defense may not sport the most glamorous numbers, they are nonetheless efficient in making key stops and creating opportunities for the Frogs to win games. Outside of a hideous rout in Stillwater, TCU (10-2) lost by just one point to Oklahoma on the road in Norman and that was with Boykin shelfed with an injury. Now, Boykin is back to full health and primed to showcase why he was a pre-season favorite for the Heisman Trophy. The Oregon defense will be more than accommodating, as they rank among the worst in points allowed, total defense and passing yards per game. Boykin and Doctson will certainly take advantage and with Oregon’s historic track record of floundering in bowl games of this caliber, we are all the more excited to back the Frogs. The line here suggests this is a fair fight but we’re not buying that for a second. The more likely outcome is that Oregon is not even going to know what hit them.
