College Football Future Bets: Texas Tech, Washington are good buys right now

Things are already off the rails in college football.

Texas may be back. Florida State looks like it is, too. Coach Prime and the Colorado Buffaloes are bankrupting the bookmakers. Ohio State looks ordinary. And for the first time in a very long time the SEC looks like it could be wide open.

And while the cream usually rises to the top by the end of the college football season, things feel very different right now. So let’s look at a few betting strategies that embrace the chaos.

Now is the time to buy Texas Tech

It doesn’t take long for a hype train to derail.

The Red Raiders were a pretty popular sleeper pick to win the Big 12 at +1000, though it should be noted that there were plenty of skeptics who pushed back on the positivity by noting that Texas Tech went 4-0 in one-score games and some regression should be expected.

So far, it’s the doubters who look right.

Texas Tech is 0-2 to start the season with losses to Wyoming and Oregon on its ledger. But the loss in Laramie -- where weird stuff always happens -- came by a margin of two points and it was followed up by a wild defeat at the hands of the Ducks. The latter took place at the same time as Texas vs. Alabama, so not many people would have saw that the Red Raiders had some brutal luck and saw a, uh, weird call go against them in a 38-30 loss and non-cover.

As ugly as the 0-2 mark looks for Joey McGuire’s Red Raiders, there’s no real reason to get in a tizzy. Conference play hasn’t even started yet!

The Red Raiders take on FCS Tarleton State in Week 3 to get right and after that they travel east to open up conference play with a trip to West Virginia on Sept. 23.

And if you look beyond a very winnable game in Morgantown, you’ll see that the schedule never really gets out of hand for Texas Tech.

In addition to West Virginia, the Red Raiders have road games against BYU, Kansas and Baylor -- not too bad -- before closing the show in Texas in what could be a dead-rubber spot for the Longhorns who may have already wrapped up a spot in the Big 12 Championship Game.

Texas Tech also avoids Oklahoma in the regular season and hosts TCU and Kansas State, giving them a very workable schedule when things truly get going this season.

It’s understandable that folks are abandoning ship in Lubbock after a slow start, but if everybody seemed tempted by this team at +1000, why not buy low when you can get double the odds despite them not playing a conference game yet?

The Huskies are a live longshot

Everything about this season feels like the Kentucky Derby. It’s a deep race and every handicapper is doing their best to poke holes in the chalk to find a longshot that will be there to pick up the pieces when the dust settles.

Penn State, Notre Dame, Texas and Florida State seem to be the popular horses right now, but there’s another team that has the potential to crash this party.

The Washington Huskies are off and running with two blowout wins over Boise State and Tulsa, but because they haven’t had a hallmark win like Texas or Florida State just yet (and because they play in the Pac-12), they haven’t received too much love.

Despite that, Collin Wilson’s Action Network power rankings make Washington the seventh-best team in the country right now, putting them a notch above Penn State, Alabama and USC, and basically on par with Michigan, Oregon and Florida State.

Every team in that cohort, except for Oregon, is priced well below the Huskies (+4000, Caesars), who have barely seen any dip in price from where they were in August.

The Huskies, who are led by a Heisman caliber quarterback in Michael Penix Jr., looks like a fine bet at +4000.

The Inquirer is not an online gambling operator, or a gambling site. We provide this information about sports betting for entertainment purposes only.