The bowl lineup is set and the Las Vegas oddsmakers have posted numbers on the five Bowl Championship Series games. As suggested Saturday night, there would be big numbers on the board, with the possibility of at least two of the games having double-digit pointspreads. We were correct.
First, the BCS title game between Oklahoma and Florida. ... Danny Sheridan predicted earlier Sunday that Florida would be a 3-point favorite and he was right. The Gators went off as 1.5-point favorites and have already been bid up to 3-point favorites. The over/under opened at 73 and is at 72 at the time of this post.
The other BCS games:
Rose: USC (-10) over Penn State. The over/under is 47.
Orange: Virginia Tech (pick) vs. Cincinnati. The over/under is 40.
Sugar: Alabama (-11) over Utah. The over/under is 45.5
Fiesta: Texas (-8) over Ohio State. The over/under is 54.
It's clear from looking at the odds that — once again — the BCS has put together a miserable lineup with two games that are not expected to be competitive and a third — the Texas-Ohio State game — already bid up to -10 on some offshore books, making three games with double-digit pointspreads.
The lines for the rest of the bowl lineup will be out Monday.
Vegas Insider did you wrong...the Gators opened 1.5 and moved to 3...
http://www.sbrlines.com/#/odds/ncaaf/game/pointspread.html
Posted by: JoeFann | December 07, 2008 at 10:37 PM
Thanks for that, JoeFann. Vegas Insider does appear to be wrong. Correction made.
Posted by: Jay Christensen | December 07, 2008 at 10:49 PM
To be fair, the BCS didn't put together all of those games. The Orange and Rose Bowl both have their traditional tie-ins in place, so their matchups are just bad luck. Alabama and Texas both went to the bowl they would have been invited to had they won their conferences and not been eligible for the national title game.
I don't see how there could have been many other matchups available that would have been any better. The season just turned out the way it did and the teams that made it in are deserving. Sometimes we just get a dud slate of games.
Posted by: Aldo | December 08, 2008 at 05:27 AM
About the only thing that really should have been done is that Ohio State and Utah should be flipped. It'd make ratings a little worse for the Fiesta (Utah's not Ohio State, but they're quite popular in the mountain west; making the trek out to Nawlins is a bit much, though), and a lot better for the Sugar.
Posted by: CuseFanInSoCal | December 08, 2008 at 07:28 AM
Aren't these all (or at least most of)the teams that you playoff proponents have been arguing should be involved in a playoff? How would playoff seeding have made the spreads any closer or the match-ups any more compelling?
Posted by: Tired of the Whining | December 08, 2008 at 07:28 AM
so nobody wants to see texas-bama?
Posted by: jd | December 08, 2008 at 09:33 AM