Preview and picks for NCAA Football
The Cincinnati Bearcats are set to host UCLA on Thursday in what will be the season opener for both teams. An opening kickoff time of 7:00 PM ET is slated for Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati. The game will be televised nationally by ESPN.
At the time of this writing, college football odds at Bookmaker has Cincinnati listed as a 2.0-point home favorite. These teams met last season at UCLA, and the 14.0-point underdog Bearcats walked off with a huge 26-17 upset win.
Huge Disparity in Home/Away Splits
Cincinnati is coming off an extremely successful 2018 campaign which saw them go 11-2. They culminated their season with a 35-31 bowl game win over Virginia Tech. When I reviewed the Bearcats season, there’s one thing that particularly jumped off the page. They went a perfect 6-0 at home and had an enormous victory margin of 30.0-points per game. Cincinnati returns 15 starters in 2019.
UCLA does return 19 starters from a year ago. However, those frontline returnees are from a team that went a dismal 3-9 last season. Additionally, Bruins backers will surely be leery of Cincinnati’s home field dominance which they exhibited in 2018. Especially since their team has gone a futile 2-15 during its last 17 away games.
Super Angle
Any college football home favorite (Cincinnati) that won 11 or more games in its previous season, and they’re playing their season opener, resulted in those home favorites going 126-8 (94%) straight up since 1990. If those home favorites were facing a non-conference opponent (UCLA), they improved to a perfect 36-0 straight up since 2014.
I had a strong lean toward the Bearcats to begin with. Nevertheless, the previously mentioned college football betting angle just further solidified my position.
Pick: Cincinnati -2.0
Ross Benjamin is a top sports analyst and one of the sports industry's most respected handicappers. Follow him on Twitter: @RossBenjamin1 or visit his website at RBWins.com