Friday, December 17, 2010

2010 College Football Bowl Season

The NCAA Division 1 Bowl season is about to get started with three separate bowl games scheduled for tomorrow. The first game is the New Mexico Bowl and kickoff for this game will be 2:00PM Eastern Time.

This means that anyone who is looking for a college bowl pickem contest needs to sign up and get at least get these three games picked before tomorrow afternoon. Otherwise, you will be at a disadvantage in any contest that involves picking all 35 bowl games.

Can you win any prizes? Sure you can, if you're extremely lucky. A lot of the free contests have more than 100,000 player entries and there are only prizes for the top 3 or 5 places. If you are really looking for more of an office pool type game where you don't have to pay much to enter and have a chance at winning a big pool, then you should check out these pay for contests.

Fortunetaly, all is not lost if you're reading this and this is Sunday December 19 or later. In the confidence pickem leagues, you will only be losing your confidence number 1, 2 and 3 picks and I will pretty much guarantee you that this won't be the reason you lost.

There are also tournaments, like the Fox Sports College Football Pickem that do not start until Christmas Day. In this tournament, the first bowl game that you have to pick is the Little Caesars Bowl. Let's face it, not all of you would know that the bowl season starts this early.

BetUS College Football New Year's Day Promo

I've found this special promotion for college bowl betting on New Year's Day that I, myself, am going to try. This special bet is only going to be offered at BetUS Sportsbook. Get ready to try you luck as well because for just $100 you can make a six-team parlay and get a chance to win $4000!

All you will have to do is register with BetUS if you haven't already done so and bet on one team or another for six of the New Year's Day bowl games. If you win all six, the $4000 is yours!

Projections for the First Three Bowl Games of 2010



Update 12-20: Well, two out of three isn't bad. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to post predictions for every bowl game. However, I found a good sports blog called bestsportsgambling.com that has predicted the first three NCAA bowl games correctly. They just posted their pick for the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl St Petersburg today. This game features the Louisville Cardinals (6-6) vs the Southern Miss Golden Eagles (8-4).

New Mexico Bowl

Let's start with the New Mexico Bowl. The BYU Cougars are currently 11 1/2 point favorites against the spread over the UTEP Miners, although both teams a 6-6. The reason for this large margin is that UTEP has been going down the second half of the season being losers of 5 of their last 6 and a majority of their wins are over some of the worst teams in college football.

Meanwhile, BYU isn't a whole lot better overall; but they have won 4 of their last 5 and almost won at #20 Utah. This looks one sided all the way.

Pick: BYU - Spread Winner: BYU - Projected Score: 38 - 24

Humanitarian Bowl

The second bowl game to be played is going to be the Humanitarian Bowl. This bowl game starts at 5:30PM ET and features the Northern Illinois Huskies against the Fresno State Bulldogs. Whether may be a big factor in this game will be played outdoors at Boise State's blue field.

The Huskies are currently 2 point favorites over the Bulldogs. I believe that this because Northern Illinois has the better overall record of 10-3 compared to Fresno State at 8-4. The Huskies were undefeated in the MAC conference until the championship game, which they lost to Miami of Ohio (9-4).

The Huskies have a high powered offense that has scored at least 20 points in every game except the first game of the season. Meanwhile, the Bulldogs have been a little suspect when it comes to playing the good teams in their conference. They were blown out of all but one of the top teams that they played.

But the two teams do have a common opponent, the Illinois Fighting Illini, which Fresno State recently beat and Northern Illinois lost to at the start of the season.
With that win over Illinois, the added travel for the Huskies and the conditions in Idaho in mid-December in mind, here are my picks for this game:

Pick: Fresno State - Spread Winner: Fresno State - Projected Score: 21 - 17

New Orleans Bowl

The final bowl game for tomorrow will be the New Orleans Bowl. This game features the Ohio Bobcats against the Troy Trojans. The Bobcats are 8-4 out of the MAC and Troy is 7-5 out of the Sunbelt conference. At the surface, this game looks about as even as it can get.

That was before I saw the spread move at BetUS from being a pickem to Troy getting a 3 point advantage. What is it that has moved the spread a field goal in two days? This is either because of an unannounced injury or suspension or more likely it could be a sign that people are starting to bet on Troy more which and it's moving to correct this.

When you look at Troy, their defense tends to give up a lot of points which means if they win this game it will probably be a shootout. The majority of their wins have been relatively close. The big advantage that I see with Troy is that the university is located in Alabama. I'm not sure if Troy travels well, but this could be a factor in this game.

Meanwhile, Ohio has a better defense allowing 10 less points a game. The Bobcats were on a 7 game winning streak before they lost badly inexplicably to Kent State (5-7) when they had a chance to go to the MAC Championship game. This is a tough one, but here are my suggestions:

Pick: Troy - Spread Winner: Ohio - Projected Score: 28-27

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