College football lookahead is the essential grab bag of numbers, trends, reads and concepts each Monday throughout the season.
In Week 8, we lay out a plan to back the best in the MAC down the stretch, examine a rare October slate full of monster numbers and stretch out in all the newfound space on the Georgia bandwagon.
All lines and totals from Circa Sportsbook as of Sunday.
Portfolio checkup
Which teams we're buying or selling and why.
Buy: Georgia Bulldogs
There's no better time to back the Bulldogs than right now when the red-and-black bandwagon is emptying faster than Rutgers goes three-and-out. We didn't back South Carolina -- and aren't claiming it's not fair to be surprised -- but Saturday's loss to the Gamecocks shouldn't be considered all that shocking. South Carolina considers Georgia its biggest SEC rival, and its head coach considers Georgia's coach his biggest personal rival. Will Muschamp's team was in a great spot to play well coming off a really good stretch that included a good week of practice, followed by a confidence-building performance against Kentucky (its best of the season) and then an open date and another good week of prep.
South Carolina played well and fought hard, caught Jake Fromm on a bad day and saw the Bulldogs make just enough mistakes to squander a dominating statistical performance that included a 30-16 edge in first downs and a 468-297 yardage margin. The box score is more indicative of the real Georgia than the final score, and we're betting the Dawgs just got the wakeup call they needed and that's the last sloppy outing we see from Fromm and this offense for a while.
Only four of the past 13 national champions have been undefeated, and Georgia still is in the SEC race. The margin for error has been expended and it's time to bear down and make sure the rest of the schedule gets Georgia's A-game, but it's not a time to panic. The Bulldogs' defense is a lot like Alabama's, suffering from inexperience, depth and leadership issues. But this team is a very tight-knit group, and when chemistry, talent and coaching are all this good and every goal is still on the table, it's time to plan for a strong bounce back.
Plan of action: We might start right away against a Kentucky outfit that Georgia has owned with six straight covers but that just notched an emotional win in trying circumstances, can't throw the ball effectively, can't run it the way they need to against a defense like Georgia's and just had to show everything in the playbook to get past Arkansas. But the real spot is the following game against Florida, another team Kirby Smart's stop unit can probably turn one-dimensional.
Buy: Western Michigan Broncos
This is the worst year we can remember for the MAC since the league was promoted from the "added games" list to the main Vegas rotation back in the days of the California Raisin Bowl tie-in. The MAC East is as bad a division as you'll see, and the winner of the West will probably be a monster favorite in the title game. We agree with Bill Connelly's SP+ numbers that Western Michigan and Toledo are the class of the league; we're looking for spots to buy both down the stretch, and they're not hard to find in this weakened league.
Western Michigan and third-year boss Tim Lester have a lot going for them. Lester inherited the best talent in the league from the top recruiter in MAC history, and the fledglings from P.J. Fleck's last class are now upperclassmen. This is a veteran team with a senior quarterback and all-conference players in every position group. It's also a team with an offense explosive enough to cover big numbers, which is what the Broncos will be laying in November, when they'll be able to get in a rhythm with exclusively Tuesday games. Plus, Toledo's upset loss reopens the door in the MAC race.
Plan of action: We'll probably sit out next week's road trip to rival Eastern Michigan, a team with its back against the wall at 0-2 in the conference, but after that it's full steam ahead against the outclassed foursome of Bowling Green, Ball State, Ohio and Northern Illinois. Lester has shown he likes the chalk role, as the Broncos have scored 40 or more points in more than a third of his career games and posted an 8-3 ATS mark as double-digit favorites.
Buy: Toledo Rockets
It's easy to understand the Rockets overlooking Bowling Green, as they'd won nine straight over their rival and this year's Falcons had lost their past four by a combined score of 201-27 -- and much of that scoring output came in the fourth quarter of a 62-20 blowout loss to lowly Kent State. Toledo still controls the MAC race and still has the best coaching staff in the league.
Plan of action: Great coaching is a good indicator for success down the stretch, as well-coached teams never stop improving and typically show well in November. Jason Candle is 10-2 ATS in the final five games of the regular season the past two years. He's in his fourth year at the helm, as is next week's foe Mike Neu, and has clobbered Neu's Ball State squad by at least two touchdowns in each of the first three meetings.
We'll be looking to back Toledo this week, provided the Rockets are not shell-shocked from the big upset. Then, as with Western Michigan, we might skip fading Chris Creighton and salty Eastern Michigan, which has covered 21 out of the past 30 as an underdog. But after that? Four straight opponents that cannot be described as good. We'd expect blind betting Toledo and WMU in the final four games of each schedule will yield at least a 5-3 ATS mark, and with a little luck and/or selectivity, we might be able to take that default plan and turn it into 5-2 or 6-1.
Openers
First impressions from the schedule and opening lines.
There are three games between ranked teams this week and seven weekday tilts, leading off with Wednesday's South Alabama-Troy rivalry.
Ohio State Buckeyes (-28, 48.5) at Northwestern Wildcats
8:30 p.m. ET, Friday (FS1)
The rematch of last year's Big Ten title game features the largest home price Pat Fitzgerald has been offered in his head coaching career and second biggest overall, behind the 29.5 his Cats took from Michigan back in 2006, Fitz's first season as a head coach. True to what would become his "salty underdog" rep, Fitz covered easily in a 17-3 loss. The issue for the hosts this week is not just that no one has come closer than 24 points against the Buckeyes this year, but also that there has been nothing fluky about it -- no team has managed to get to within 235 yards of them in the box score.
Auburn Tigers (-16.5, 54.5) at Arkansas Razorbacks
Noon ET, Saturday (SEC Network)
Gus Malzahn has absolutely owned his home state team. The former Razorbacks walk-on and Natural State high school coaching legend is 5-1 both straight up and ATS versus the Hogs, with the lone setback an unlucky break from an ATS standpoint, as the Tigers were catching a touchdown in Fayetteville back in 2015 but fell by eight in four overtimes. Malzahn has hung 600 yards on the Razorbacks three times in the six meetings, while allowing his opponent 350 only once. The past three meetings have seen Auburn outscore Arkansas by 120 points while laying a combined 57.
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets at Miami Hurricanes (-19.5, 46.5)
Noon ET, Saturday (ACCN)
Our immediate reaction to these prices -- and the team total of 33 for the favored host -- was to wonder if the chalk's struggling offense can even score enough to cover. Take Virginia Tech out of the equation, and it has been 13 games since the Hurricanes scored more than 33 on a Power 5 opponent.
Purdue Boilermakers at Iowa Hawkeyes (-17.5, 48.5)
Noon ET, Saturday (ESPN2)
Like Miami, will Iowa be able to reach its team total of 33 points with the way its offense has been playing? The Hawkeyes haven't reached that mark against a Power 5 foe since routing Illinois 63-0 last November.
Buffalo Bulls (-20, 47) at Akron Zips
3:30 p.m. ET, Saturday (ESPN3)
It's just the second time in school history that the Bulls have given 20 points to a fellow FBS team, and this is on the road. Of course, Akron could well be historically bad. The Zips are the only team in the nation without either a straight-up win or a cover to their credit this year.
East Carolina Pirates at UCF Knights (-35, 61.5)
7 p.m. ET, Saturday (CBSSN)
The Knights have dominated this series of late, covering eight of the past 10 between the teams. But UCF has dropped three straight overall ATS, and it's a hefty price for a team that has had to readjust its goals so dramatically. Both teams are off an open date.
Around the slate
There are a dozen undefeated teams remaining, and now that Appalachian State has cracked the rankings at No. 24, each unbeaten team has made its way into the AP poll. Rice, Akron and New Mexico State are the only winless teams, and Akron, Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech are still winless ATS, though the Yellow Jackets did at least push the closing number at some shops this week.
Week 8 features one of the largest crop of monster numbers you'll ever see in October, with a whopping six teams laying at least four touchdowns in conference play. It's some of the usual suspects -- Alabama, Ohio State and Oklahoma -- along with new-money standard Central Florida, which is offering up five touchdowns or more in conference play for the fourth time in the past three seasons. Also included is Wisconsin (-30.5 at Illinois), which has given Big Ten foes four scores or more only four times since 1996 and only once on the road. And then there's Minnesota laying 30 at Rutgers, the biggest price the Gophers have laid on the Big Ten road in their history. Such is the power of an opponent that logged just a single passing yard last time out. If you've got the stomach for Rutgers (we don't), the unprecedented price suggests that now's the time to move in. It's too bad Rutgers hosts Ohio State later this season; if that one were in Columbus we might see the largest point spread in the history of the sport's oldest conference.
There will be more totals in the 30s down the stretch as the weather turns colder, but not this week. Duke-Virginia and UAB-Old Dominion share the week's lowest at 44. The highest belongs to Washington State and Colorado, which meet in Pullman with an expectation of 72.5 points on the board.