By Chris Marler
With the college football regular season all wrapped up, postseason play officially begins with conference championship games throughout the first weekend of December. Oddsmakers released opening betting lines for all nine conference championship games. Here’s a look at all nine games followed by some takeaways.
Western Kentucky at Jacksonville State (-3)
UNLV at Boise State (-4)
Tulane (-4) at Army
Iowa State at Arizona State (-2.5)
Ohio at Miami Ohio (-2.5)
Georgia at Texas (-3)
Marshall at Louisiana (-3.5)
Penn State at Oregon (-3.5)
Clemson at SMU (-2.5)
I’m not going to dive into the Group of Five games and instead focus on the Power Four. Right off the bat, the Georgia line is interesting because they are a three-point underdog to Texas. This is only the fourth time that Georgia has been an underdog in a game over the last five seasons. Kirby Smart teams are 2-2 straight up and against the spread in those games with their only two losses coming against teams who eventually won the national championship.
Georgia was an underdog to Texas once already this season and beat them outright on the road by 15 points. However, Georgia is 3-9 against the spread this season which ranks 127th in FBS.
Arizona State and Iowa State is also interesting because Arizona State finished the year an astounding 10-2 against the spread which was the best of any Power Four team.
The Big Ten Championship will be decided in Indianapolis, and I don’t want to give out free gambling advice this early in the week, but you should probably hammer Oregon. The Ducks are a 3.5-point favorite over 11-1 Penn State. However, James Franklin is 1-14 overall in games against top five opponents as the head coach at Penn State. Franklin’s only win over a top five team happened in 2016 and it required 17 fourth quarter points and a blocked field goal return for a touchdown to do so.
Lastly, the game outside of Atlanta that SEC fans will be watching closest is in Charlotte. Clemson has won seven of the last nine ACC championship games, but is currently a 2.5-point underdog to ACC newcomer SMU. Clemson and SMU have a combined one win in three games over teams currently ranked in the top 25 and strength of schedules ranked 65th and 75th in the country respectively.
