Well tonight is the big night or what we all in the professional handicapping business call “Christmas in August.” Its officially the beginning of the NCAA college football season tonight at 8 PM on ESPN as the LSU Tigers get set to take on the Mississippi State Bulldogz in a nationally televised game. The game currently carries a spread of 17 1/2 to the road team(MS) and this game figures on becoming a showcase to the national championship hopes of LSU. While I have a strong preferance with this pick, I will save my analysis for later in the article.

As the title of this article states, I am here to offer some specific handicapping advice for Week 1 of the college football season. Now our professional handicappers have been at work all spring and summer long breaking down every team in D-1 with the express purpose of being ready to successfully handicap our games from the get-go like always. For those who aren’t familiar with us, we our currently in our tenth year of professional existence and our website can be accessed by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page. We offer deep analysis and handicapping info on NFL and NCAA football, MLB, NHL, and NCAA b-ball. Out ten year cumulative handicapping record puts us at the 59 percent success mark and has made us a source of trust for many in this line of recreation. What us so good at what we do is that we don’t make boastful claims of pickign at 80 percent(which no one possibly do). We are realistic when it comes to this game as our nearly 60 percent mark is genuinely legit and has allowed us to bring in hundreds of loyal subscribers each year. We have over 4 dozen time-tested game scenarios and trends that we specifically look out for and that have been proven to be big winners. This has enabled us to have great success in this very unpredictable game. So enough with the preaching. Lets look at a few of the trends we like to look at when evaluating Week 1 games specifically.

Now week 1 in any sport is a very difficult time for almost all handicappers. The new season brings lots of questions about a team’s legitimacy and whether a team really is as good as they look to be in their press clippings. So you must tread with great caution in week 1. Since this article is about college football, we will stick with this sport in discussing potential pitfalls.

One thing linesmakers like to do in Week 1 is overinflate the betting lines when a big name, championship caliber team is involved. No one knows before Week 1 whether these so-called “Big Time” teams really do have what it takes to succeed and whether they are fraudulent contenders. Many a team has come into the year with big plans and hype, only to fall flat on their faces. So what you see many a time are these teams giving a bigger than usual amount of points to their underdog opponents and thus in turn make these underdogs live bets. Looking at the lines heading into week 1, we see this scenario unfolding in a bunch of games. Here are some games where a much hyped team is giving a ton of points to its opponent without having anything to show for warranting such favoritism.

WEST VIRGINIA 24 W. Michigan

VIRGINIA TECH 24 East Carolina

MIAMI 18 Marshall

NEBRASKA 21 Nevada

UCLA 17 Stanford

TCU 21 Baylor

OKLAHOMA 40 1/2 North Texas

TEXAS 38 1/2 Arkansas State

PENN STATE 38 Fla. International

ARKANSAS 24 Troy

These are just some of those type of games mentioned above. Now we don’t feel that all of these favorites won’t cover the spread! We are just simply pointing out how these numbers are so large with no games being played to warrant this type of line. Week 1 historically has seen underdogs dominate the covers and so you must be on the lookout for these types of LIVE PLAYS in order to maximize your intake. Now we like a number of the underdogs listed above along with some of the favorites but since we are a business, I can’t simply give them to you on here. I have broken down two of these games for free on the website but the others are part of our Week 1 subscription package which includes between 15-18 games each week with 5 BEST BETS that have come in successfully at around 65%!

So hence we have our first lesson for college football 2007. I have dozens of more game-winning trends like this that I will periodically share from time to time so make sure you check us out.

By: Michael Keneski

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