College Football Betting Picks, Week 6: The LOCK Streak Continues!

Another week and another hit on my "Lock of the Week". Somewhere Jimmy the Greek is smiling and is impressed.

Last Week: 3-2

Overall: 12-13

Lock of the Week: 5-0

Clemson at Boston College (+17)

Buyer BEWARE---I am 1-4 picking BC games this year. The good news is that I’m 11-9 picking non-BC games so far!

Since Steve Addazio has come to the Heights his team has been a 17 point dog or higher a total of 5 times and the Eagles are 4-0-1 ATS in those spots including an outright upset of USC in 2014. Addazio’s conservative play calling and decision making stinks in close games but its awesome when you have a team trying to cover a 17 point spread.

My bet is that Addazio plays it conservative in this game because he fears losing the confidence of the team if Clemson comes in and blows out his team  on national television.

Cincinnati (-2.5) at UConn

When you are hot at the poker table and winning hands with a couple of 4’s against pocket cowboys you should never get up from the table. I’m 2-0 picking against UConn this year and don’t see a reason to go against them here.

These two defenses are pretty close on paper but I think the Bearcats can move the ball on offense more efficiently than UConn. When you watch Diaco’s club on offense it’s incredibly painful because they make it look really hard to move the ball 10 yards down the field. It reminds me of another team I know. Cinci is down to its third string quarterback but I think they have a great offensive line and will grind out this win.

Colorado at USC (+5)

USC got a little bit of its mojo back after a 41-20 thrashing against Arizona State last week. That being the case there are people running to jump back on the Trojans bandwagon after freshman quarterback Sam Darnold looked good passing for 352 yards and 3 touchdowns and looked to have a good connection with JuJu Smith.

The thing is though that Arizona State has a pitiful defense that’s surrendering 503 yards per game. USC’s next opponent, Colorado has the #1 defense in the PAC10 allowing 290 yards per game. I think the Buffs defense keeps this close and they cover.

Notre Dame (+2.5) at NC State

I’m not sure why NC State is getting so much love here. I know that it’s always a big game when the ‘Irish come to town so the ‘Pack definitely have that intangible factor here. The way I process this game though is if Notre Dame beats Texas in that crazy double overtime game in week one and rolls in here 3-2 and ranked are they road dogs in Raleigh?

The Notre Dame passing attack is lighting things up this year averaging 327 yards per game which is the 15^th best nationally. On the flip side the NC State pass defense is in the 60’s in both passing yards per game and QB rating. I know Notre Dame’s defense is lousy but I think there offense is better than NC State’s defense.

Maybe this a bad way to rationalize things but I see Stanford and Miami waiting on the schedule along with Virginia Tech and USC at the end of the year.  Brian Kelly can just not afford to drop to 2-4 with Stanford and Miami waiting on deck.

Lock of the Week

Tennessee at Texas A&M (-6.5)

I’ve been burned betting against Butch Jones twice already this year. As George W Bush used to say "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." Well I guess I am ignoring W because I’m going against Butch one more time.

I guess you could call Tennessee either the luckiest or the most clutch team in the country however you want to look at it. My take here is that they got up two weeks ago for a huge game against Florida in which they made one of the best comebacks of the year. Last week of course was the Hail Mary win over Georgia. I think that that two game stretch was emotionally draining for the team and it will be tough to rev it up once again this Saturday.