Best College Football Bets: Bowl Season Week 1

We are back at it again this week with more college football bets! It turns out that betting FCS football is not easy. We went 1-2 last week, taking us down to 22-23 for the year. However, we only lost 0.3 units thanks to that Albany upset. We are still up 3.45 on on the season.

Luckily, we are back to picking (mostly) FBS games this week has bowl season gets started. Also, you can catch my, and my fellow ATB bettors’ favorite locks and underdogs on this week’s episode of Around the book. As usual, we have three great picks and all lines come via Draft Kings as of Thursday evening.

Let’s get into the best bets for college football’s first week of bowl season!

Before we get to some of FBS picks, we have one non-FBS bowl game to pick: The Cricket Celebration Bowl. This matchup is essentially the HBCU National Championship Game. This should be a good matchup and an even better betting opportunity.

Howard comes into this game as the clear underdog. They are 6-5 and kind of stole the MEAC conference title. Meanwhile, Florida A&M is 11-1 and has been the class of HBCU football all year.

When you dig a little deeper, you realize that the Bison might be significantly better than their record. Earlier this year, they came within a field goal of upsetting Northwestern, a Big Ten team that went 7-5 this year. The Rattlers’ lone FBS matchup came against South Florida of the AAC, who went 6-6 this year. Florida A&M was beaten 38-24 in that matchup.

These teams are closer than they appear on paper. Close enough that the value is too juicy to ignore. At +210, you have to take Howard here.

Let’s get into some FBS action with R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl. This is a de facto home game for the Ragin’ Cajuns. Unfortunately, it won’t be nearly enough to keep them within a field goal.

Ironically, our first FBS bowl pick involves a recently promoted FCS program. Jacksonville State has started strong in their first FBS season, going 8-4. The Gamecocks look like rising stars in Conference USA. Meanwhile, Louisiana has limped to bowl eligibility at 6-6.

On top of the home-field advantage, the reason why this spread is so close is the fact that the Sun Belt is considered a much stronger conference than Conference USA. Nevertheless, this is still a matchup between arguably one of the top five to ten programs in the “Group of Five” and one that is very much average. Jacksonville State should have no problem covering.

Let’s wrap things up with the Isleta New Mexico Bowl. This is another one of those absurd Group of Five bowls that exists solely to sell advertisements. That being said, this one should have some excitement.

In this matchup we have two teams that can light up the scoreboard. Combined, they average almost 59 points per game. We should expect a ton of offensive fireworks in this matchup.

These sleepy bowl games tend to have a ton of action. As long as both teams have average offensive performances, the total should be close to 60. Hammer the over.

• Howard ML (+210)
• Jacksonville State -2.5 (-112)
• NMSU vs Fresno St. Over 51 (-110)
• Parlay odds: +1020