College Football Notes And Line Moves For 8/30/08

As we’ve been saying for the past two months, Temple is in our group of teams that traditionally aren’t good at all but in 2008 don’t stink anymore.

Temple pretty much had their way with Army last night, scoring TD’s every way possible, That’s offense, defense, and special teams, to get us back to even in both our picks and in our unit wagers heading into Saturday (2-2 vs. the spread). Another one on our non-stinkers list, Rice, also won easily after spotting SMU 13 points to open the game. Team these two with Buffalo’s win and Duke playing a sub division team and our list of teams that don’t stink anymore will be 4-0 after today.

Speaking of Saturday, while we know we’ve seen a few games already, today really feels like the start of college football. Sure I cared about some of the other games and yes there will be some great and meaningful games on days other than Saturday this year, I love Saturday college football. I have heard people describe the season kickoff as opening day but really I associate that with Baseball, in Football it’s really just kicking off the season.

Since a lot of the point spreads for today’s games came out over a month ago we would have expected a lot more movement than we’ve seen, I’m not saying we haven’t seen anything, just not too many where it’s been drastic. Let’s talk about a few specifics and see if they sway us in our original picks.

The line in Virginia Tech-East Carolina tilt opened at 10 and many places have it at 9 1/2 but I see at as low as 8 1/2 at some places as I write this. Those who read Bleacher Report probably know that I’ve been debating this one with Lisa Horne.  Why she likes ECU I just can’t squeeze out of her but I’m a loyal Frank Beamer and Bud Foster backer when it comes to my hard earned cash. I’ll be picking against Lisa in a  article of hers some time this season.

While people talk about last years close game, I think they forget the emotion of that day as it was VT’s first game after the tragedy. I am tempted to go bigger on the Hokies as 8 1/2 is ridiculous, this should be a defensive beat down by VT.

In another line move, the Tulsa-UAB game is down to 13 points after opening at Tulsa -14 1/2. I still like Tulsa in a romp scoring at will on UAB. For those following my stuff, you know UAB is in that group of teams that really stink that also features teams like Minnesota and a few others we’ll talk about.

The line is down to 19 in the Arkansas State-Texas A&M game after opening at 20 1/2. While we can’t take credit for moving the line with our Arkansas State pick, we got this one early as I think it goes even lower. Texas A&M may be over rated but they don’t quite make our stink team. The Big 12 is already represented well with Iowa State and Baylor.

When I released my pick in the Kansas State-North Texas game I said that this line would keep going and going, it is in fact our Energizer Bunny line of the week as the only thing that will be able to stop it is the actual start of the game. It’s moved from 24 to 27 and it’s headed north of 4 touchdowns.

The Missouri-Illinois game is at 9 points after opening at 8. If you haven’t seen it this was my “spot light game” in my latest video commentary. I enjoy doing those and hopefully the quality just gets better and better. I know the appearance is much better on the new site look as I’ve seen it, I can sadly report that I look the same.

For those who haven’t heard the LSU-Appalachian State game has been moved to 11 am EST and is now on ESPN Classic. This came at the request of the Governor who wanted everyone to be safe from the impending Hurricane. While I think 6 hours does help.., you know what, it’s Saturday so I’ll give it a rest, let’s just say they love their college football on the Bayou. I’m not sure what ESPN will fill that prime 5pm EST time slot with, maybe they have Hoosiers or Rudy que’d up?

I’ll be around to today so feel free to shoot me an email if I’ve missed anything. I’ll definitely be back tomorrow and with 42 games on TV today I should find something to talk about.