College Football Betting: Underdog Picks For Week 0

College football is upon us. Fans have been hungering for a full season after last year’s truncated campaign. This is also a season in which the landscape of college football will feature the current conference structure, which is about to change due to Texas and Oklahoma leaving for the SEC. There is no guarantee we will have some of these conferences in three years. All of that aside, let’s take a look at four Week 0 underdogs and see what they are up against.

Nebraska Cornhuskers at Illinois Fighting Illini

Underdog: Illinois +7

Nebraska enters this contest a total mystery and the Illini enter this game under new head coach Bret Bielema, who knows how to coach Big Ten football. He has the conference championships at Wisconsin to prove it. The Huskers enter this game 12-20 in Scott Frost’s three previous seasons. The big name hire has yet to pay off. This is undoubtedly a boom or bust year for Frost as head coach at Nebraska, especially ahead of the reshuffling of the conferences. The Huskers will want someone who can recruit the Midwest before Oklahoma and Texas join the SEC. Frost has to win this game. He might be done if he loses. Illinois has a lot less to lose than Nebraska, which could enable the Illini to play freely, but Illinois is in more of a rebuild than Nebraska is. Nebraska probably wins, but Illinois has a decent chance to cover.

Connecticut Huskies at Fresno State Bulldogs

Underdog: Connecticut +27.5

The Bulldogs are entering head coach Kalen DeBoer’s second season in charge. The Huskies are in head coach Randy Edsall’s fourth year in charge, following a previous tenure at the school. Edsall has yet to capture the magic he once possessed when previously in charge of the Husky football program. Edsall has instead won no more than three games in any season during his second stint and will surely be fired if he gets off to a similar start with the Huskies. We’ll see if the Bulldogs are ready to jump out of the gate, which will surely help the recruiting class they’re putting together. Fresno State’s goal is to win the Mountain West’s West Division, earning a date with Boise State in the conference title game at the end of the year. Fresno State might get off to a sloppy start, giving UConn a chance to cover.

UTEP Miners at New Mexico State Aggies

Underdog: New Mexico State +10

The Miners are solid favorites against the Aggies in Week 0 and probably for good reason. New Mexico State has won more than three games in a season only one time in the last nine years. The Aggies are usually a two-win team and coach Doug Martin is in his ninth overall year as head coach. You know what you’re going to get with Martin and it’s honestly not very much. To be fair to Martin, New Mexico State isn’t a job that people are beating down the door to grab, so the Aggies work with what they have. UTEP has not been an especially impressive or successful program in recent years, so in many ways, this is a battle of which team will minimize mistakes, rather than which team will maximize big plays. Damage control is the theme of this game, avoiding highly negative plays which will lead to a bad sequence of events.

Hawaii Rainbow Warriors at UCLA Bruins

Underdog: Hawaii +18

Hawaii can frustrate opponents with their unique brand of football, a hybrid scheme with spread principles but also a quarterback – Chevan Cordeiro – who likes to tuck the ball away and scramble. Some experts feel the UCLA Bruins have quietly been improving under head coach Chip Kelly, and maybe that’s true, but the Bruins ultimately have to prove they’re for real. They have a defense which did not do a good job in fourth quarters last season. Hawaii is in the second season of head coach Todd Graham’s tenure. Graham used to coach in the Pac-12 when he was with Arizona State. If anyone is going to frustrate an opponent to no end, it’s going to be Todd Graham. Ultimately, UCLA, is getting a lot of respect with a line this big. The Bruins’ defense has not proved worthy of being an 18-point favorite against a Mountain West team which – w