Line for Austin Peay-Tennessee starts big and grows as kickoff nears

Opening point spreads for college football games usually come out six days in advance, but lines for matchups between Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) teams generally don’t come out until much closer to kickoff. Tennessee opened up as a massive favorite against Austin Peay for its home opener on Saturday evening at Neyland Stadium, and the number already had grown in the hours before kickoff. According to Caesars Sportsbook, the ninth-ranked Vols opened as a 44.5-point favorite and the line was up to Tennessee -48 roughly two-and-a-half hours ahead of the scheduled 5 p.m. kickoff.

Tennessee was a four-touchdown favorite in its season opener against Virginia last week and covered easily in a 49-13 win at Nissan Stadium in Nashville.

Austin Peay opened the season with a 49-23 loss at Southern Illinois. The FCS Govs were 7-4 in 2022 with two losses to FBS competition in Western Kentucky and Alabama. Austin Peay lost 34-0 in Tuscaloosa in its regular-season finale and ultimately missed out on the FCS playoffs.

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Tennessee went 10-3 against the spread and was 5-1 as a home favorite during its 11-win season in 2022. The Vols are looking for a 10th consecutive win at Neyland Stadium, a streak that dates back to the final two games of the 2021 season and includes them running the table with seven victories in seven home games last season. It is Tennessee’s longest home winning streak since 2006-08.

The only previous meeting between Tennessee and Austin Peay came in the 2013 season opener when the Vols won 45-0 in their first game under Butch Jones. The loss started a brutal stretch for the Govs, who compiled a 1-45 record over a four-season span (2013-16). Austin Peay’s fortunes have turned around since under Will Healy, Mark Hudspeth and now Scotty Walden with a 41-29 record since the start of the 2017 season, a span that included an Ohio Valley Conference championship and run to the FCS quarterfinals in 2019.

Austin Peay left the OVC and is in its second season playing in the United Athletic Conference – the Govs were picked to finish third in the conference in its preseason poll.

The Vols rode a dominant defensive performance and big days from quarterback Joe Milton III (201 yards and two touchdowns passing and two touchdown runs) and running backs Jaylen Wright (123 yards from scrimmage) and Dylan Sampson (four touchdowns) to rout Virginia in an orange-clad Nashville.

Josh Heupel is 19-8 as Tennessee’s head coach and the Vols have averaged 44.8 points per game and 499.6 yards of offense per game during his tenure, which included blowout wins in FCS games against Tennessee Tech (55-0) in 2021 and UT Martin (65-24) in 2022.

Tennessee will open SEC play at Florida next week and is a 7-point favorite against the Gators per Caesars Sportsbook’s lookahead line.