Early CFB betting look for Week 7: Sell South Florida

Will Harris
ESPN PLUS ($ MATERIAL)


College football lookahead is the essential grab bag of numbers, trends, reads and concepts each Monday throughout the season.


Join us below as we unmask a ranked unbeaten that's not even top-50 material, seek profits in Pac-12 offenses that are finding an identity and tell you which Sun Belt squad is in a very unusual spot this week -- and which one is surprisingly seasoned at its own role.
Portfolio Checkup

Which teams we're buying and selling and why.
Sell: South Florida Bulls
The Bulls are 5-0, but it's hard to call them a good team. South Florida is certainly an undisciplined one, as Charlie Strong's first edition finished ahead of only Oregon in both penalties and penalty yardage last year, and once again ranks outside the top 100 midway through this season.


The defense is less than the sum of its talented parts, while the offense has little consistency and rarely musters a drive without benefit of explosive plays, which are about the only strength this team can really hang its hat on. Transfer quarterback Blake Barnett has been a quality addition, but he joined a unit with little existing leadership, and his off-field burden has been pretty heavy for a first-year player. South Florida's 5-0 start was forged against a very soft schedule that saw the Bulls outgained by more than 100 yards twice.


South Florida's five wins have come against an FCS team and four programs that combined have won less than a third of their FBS games since the start of last year. This outfit is basically what it was last season: a poorly coached house of cards that's bailed out by some explosive playmakers. The difference between this year's team and the 2017 group is that the latter featured a truly generational athlete in record-setting quarterback Quinton Flowers, while the current roster has standard quality Florida talent. That's good, but not good enough for 10 bailouts again.



Buy: Utah Utes
Our preseason pick to win the Pac-12 South is finally looking the part. Kyle Whittingham is a stud coach, but he's not an offensive guy, and his Utes have been playing championship defense and special teams for the better part of a decade while searching for answers in the other phase. It's now Year 2 for Troy Taylor as offensive coordinator and Tyler Huntley as starting quarterback, and it looked like the whole operation finally clicked on Saturday at Stanford.


Time will tell, but Huntley and his wide receivers played their best games of the year and the offensive line had one of its best as well, while tailback Zack Mosswas his usual productive self. It looks like this offense is finally figuring it out, and if so the Utes could be a top-10-caliber team by season's end, because it's hard to find fault with the other two phases.
Slate standout

A game we'll be studying closely this week and what we're looking for.

Michigan State Spartans at Penn State Nittany Lions(-13.5)
James Franklin wasted no time revealing how he would handle the aftermath of losing another instant classic with Ohio State, vowing in his postgame presser to come down harder than ever on his entire organization. He's had an open date to do it, and how his team shows at home in its first chance at redemption depends largely on whether his ruthlessly demanding approach has backfired or been embraced.


Prospective Lions backers better be convinced that Franklin has lit a fire under his bunch, because giving a wounded Sparty serious weight has been a losing proposition. Michigan State has excelled as an underdog in part because the program has skillfully deployed two motivational tactics as needed: playing the no-respect card and circling the wagons.


The Spartans will need the latter trait now after dropping a home game with Northwestern in the face of tilts with division heavyweights Penn State and Michigan. History says they'll bounce back, as Mark Dantonio is a very impressive 13-3 ATS as a Big Ten 'dog of a touchdown or more.


Handicapper's toolbox

Handicapper's toolbox will provide a different concept every Monday, along with how to apply it on Saturday.


Be alert to the midseason rise of new difference-makers that change the whole identity of their unit.


Sometimes the emergence of a single playmaker can so dramatically improve an offense that it takes weeks for the lines, totals and team totals to catch up. Case in point: Khalil Tate in 2017.


Arizona sat at 2-2 after four weeks when Rich Rodriguez made the decision to go with Tate at quarterback. The Wildcats had routed FCS Northern Arizona and FBS doormat UTEP last September, but had struggled against real competition, putting up just 16 and 24 points in losses to Houston and Utah, respectively. Enter Tate. In the next four games, Arizona went 4-0 to the over, 4-0 straight up and 3-1 ATS with three outright wins as underdogs. The Cats scored 195 points and shattered all four team totals by double digits while Tate averaged more than 400 yards from scrimmage.


Getting in early when new impact players emerge can mean big profits when the oddsmakers don't adjust quickly enough. One guy to keep an eye on this month is California quarterback Brandon McIlwain, whose debut start in Saturday's 24-17 loss at Arizona made Cal the third team to start three quarterbacks this year (Air Force, WKU). While McIlwain threw three picks that probably cost his team the game, a scuffling offense looked completely different with the South Carolina transfer at the helm. The sophomore threw for 315 yards, by far tops for the Bears this year, but more importantly ran for more than 100 yards and a pair of scores, showing the elite athleticism that made him the 118th prospect in the ESPN 300.


Wake Forest's Jay Sawvel and Oklahoma's Mike Stoops were the first midseason coordinator firings of the season, and we think Cal offensive coordinator Beau Baldwin could be next. Whatever direction the Bears take their struggling offense from here, it's clear that McIlwain will be the centerpiece, both on the ground and through the air. Keep an eye on him and his team's prices as the Bears face the 110th and 128th scoring defenses the next two weeks.
Chalk bits

Arkansas State is getting nearly double digits at home from Appalachian State in the first Tuesday game of the year, and this team is not accustomed to being told it's an underdog in a conference it has won five times since the Steve Roberts era ended following the 2010 season. Since then, Arkansas State has had a year of Hugh Freeze at the helm, a year of Gus Malzahn, a year of Bryan Harsin and now a fifth year of Blake Anderson. In that span, the Red Wolves have been an underdog in seven Sun Belt games, three on Anderson's watch. They've covered all seven, winning six outright.


The Wolves shared the 2016 Sun Belt championship with Appalachian State when both went 7-1 in conference but didn't play each other. The two teams didn't meet last year, but they might play twice this season, as the Sun Belt has split into two five-team divisions and will hold a championship game for the first time.
One Sun Belt team more familiar with its role is Georgia Southern, undefeated ATS so far and 17-point chalk at Texas State this week. The Eagles are playing their 17th league road game since moving up to the FBS to start the 2014 season. But while Georgia Southern was a Sun Belt expansion team competing at the FBS level for the first time, it was also an elite FCS program joining the weakest FBS league. This will be the school's 13th time as the favorite in those 17 league road games, and seventh by double digits!


Ken Niumatalolo is entering his 11th season at Navy, but when his Midshipmen beat Memphis at home as touchdown underdogs back in Week 2, it marked just the seventh time Navy has taken points at home during his tenure, and three of those came in his first season. Now five-point favorite Temple will try it for the eighth time, no doubt unaware that six of the previous challengers have gone down both straight up and against the number.


California is a touchdown favorite over winless UCLA this week, and the Bruins have been the only one of the other California teams the Bears have had any success against lately. Cal has lost eight Big Games in a row to Stanford and has dropped 14 straight versus Southern Cal. When the Bears covered both of those games last year it marked just the second ATS victory against the Cardinal and fourth versus the Trojans during those losing streaks. Cal has dropped four of five to UCLA, but won four of five before that and has covered seven of the past 10. It is the first time since 2011 that the Bears have been favored in the series.


Of the 11 meetings this millennium, Michigan has covered just one game against Wisconsin.