By Robert Sanchez
Even though Week 1 of college football doesn’t officially start until Thursday, Sept. 1, the unofficial start to the season begins this Saturday with what is generally called Week 0.
Seven games will be played on Saturday to give fans a taste, an appetizer if you will, of college football before the main course starts next week.
With that said, let’s take a look at the best spreads for the highly anticipated Week 0.
Northwestern @ Nebraska, 12:30 p.m.
The Pick: Nebraska -11.5, -110 (BetMGM)
The first game of the season kicks off overseas in Dublin, Ireland as two Big Ten teams square off in a conference matchup. Normally, Big Ten games are thought to be low-scoring, grind-it-out type of affairs so a big number like -11.5 might appear to be hard to cover. However, the Wildcats are projected to be the worst team in the conference this year after a dreadful season in 2021, one that saw them go 3-9 ATS.
Not only was Northwestern terrible against the spread last season, their average margin of victory was -12.4 and their plus-minus against the spread was -8.1 meaning whatever the spread was for their games, they failed to cover by over a touchdown.
This season, the Wildcats have questions all over the field offensively and defensively and after allowing the third most points in the Big Ten a year ago while scoring just 17 points per game, I don’t envision either side of the ball improving much.
As for Nebraska, last year wasn’t all sunshine and roses either, finishing with a 3-9 record (1-8 Big Ten). The Cornhuskers did manage to cover the spread in seven of their 12 games, though, and their lone win in conference-play came against Northwestern where they won 56-7.
Nebraska also played much better than their record would indicate with each of their losses coming by single-digits, including games against Oklahoma, Michigan State, Michigan, Ohio State and Iowa.
It’s likely do-or-die time for head coach Scott Frost as well who’s been at his alma mater for the last four years with lackluster results so I expect him to be fired up to start the season off with a bang. The Cornhuskers also brought in former Texas quarterback Casey Thompson, who threw for 2,113 yards with 24 touchdowns and nine interceptions last season, to take control of the offense.
Connecticut @ Utah State, 4:00 p.m.
The Pick: Utah State -26.5, -110 (DraftKings, BetMGM, FanDuel, Bet365)
Yes, obviously this is a huge number, the biggest number of any game on Saturday in fact, but for good reason. According to ESPN, the Huskies are projected to be the second-worst team in the FBS. Offense, defense, you name it, UConn was just plain bad last season and although they brought in Jim Mora Jr. as the new head coach, I don’t see much improvement on the field of play, at least not right away.
Utah State, on the other hand, finished the season 11-3, tops in the Mountain West and were ranked 24th in the nation. The Aggies rattled off three straight wins to end their season and won eight of their last nine games, most by convincing margins.
Are the Aggies due for some regression? Probably. But certainly not in their first game against a hapless Huskies team.
Although Utah State lost some of its top playmakers, specifically at wide receiver, the Aggies still have enough depth at the position and brought in Maryland transfer Brian Cobbs to help alleviate some of that loss.
Nevertheless, with quarterback Logan Bonner gearing up for his sixth season, Utah State is in fine and capable hands to repeat their offensive production of last season. They also added a new wrinkle to the quarterback room with a dual-threat option in Levi Williams who transferred from Wyoming.
Not to mention, Utah State went 10-4 ATS last season, the second-best cover bet in the nation, and I think the defending conference champions will want to make a statement in a year where they’re projected to be in the middle of the pack in the Mountain West.
Wyoming @ Illinois, 4:00 p.m.
The Pick: Wyoming +13.5, -110 (FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM)
Sticking with the Mountain West, the Cowboys will travel to Champaign, Illinois to take on the Fighting Illini in a Mountain West-Big Ten showdown.
Neither team lit the world on fire last season but at least Wyoming played in a bowl game. Not only did they play, the Cowboys won, pretty handily, against Kent State in a 52-38 shootout. Meanwhile, Illinois suffered it’s tenth straight losing season and went 3-4 at home.
The Fighting Illini were the better cover team last season, but this number is too high for a mediocre Illinois squad. In fact, in seven home games last season, Illinois failed to cover this number in all but one of them, a 47-14 drubbing of Northwestern in the final game of the season.
Aside from that game, Illinois struggled to put up points consistently and now the Illini have Syracuse transfer Tommy DeVito under center trying to learn a new playbook. Whether DeVito can lift Illinois out of the doldrums remains to be seen, but I’m guessing he’ll have some growing pains at least in the early part of the season for a team projected towards the bottom of the Big Ten standings.
Wyoming lost a lot of talent offensively to the transfer portal and will also be going with a transfer quarterback in Andrew Peasley, so it won’t be a cake walk. But after losing running back Xazavian Valladay to Arizona State, the Cowboys still have Titus Swen who averaged 5.9 yards per carry and had seven touchdowns as a sophomore.
I’m not saying Wyoming will necessarily win this game, but I do think they have enough on offense to score some points on Illinois in what I think will be a low-scoring game. If that’s the case, +13.5 should be manageable enough for these two evenly matched teams.
