Season Record: 10-8
The college football week started with a Sun Belt game on Tuesday night and will heat up on Friday as the #3 Oregon Ducks host a 1-4 California team hoping to turn around its season. Oregon has had two weeks to stew on their crushing loss to Stanford and they will look to take out their frustrations on the Golden Bears, who are 1-4 overall and 0-4 against FBS opponents.
Cal has lost back to back games to Washington and Washington State to open PAC-12 play.
Oregon is now 4-1 after the overtime loss to Stanford. The team opened up their season with wins over Fresno State, Arizona, Ohio State, and Stony Brook.
The Ducks are 10-2 against Cal in their last 12 encounters but the Golden Bears stunned the Ducks 21-17 last season as a +9 home underdog. The Ducks are on a 15 game home winning streak.
Anthony Brown has 950 passing yards and 6 TD for the Ducks. He has thrown just 1 interception so far this season. Brown has 198 rushing yards and 4 TD on the ground. Oregon lost star runner CJ Verdell (406 yards, 6 TD) for the season and will now rely more on Travis Dye (382 yards, 3 TD, 6.4 yards per carry).
Chase Garbers has thrown every pass for Cal this season, completing 62.9 percent of his throws, for 1,245 yards with 7 TD and 5 INT. He has been sacked 11 times. Damien Moore leads the team with 313 rushing yards and 5 TD. Trevon Clark has caught 16 passes for 322 yards and 2 TD.
It seems strange to rush to pick a team that is 1-4 ATS this year and 2-8 ATS over its last ten games, but the Ducks are more than two touchdowns better than Cal, and this game should be a mismatch. This number is -13.5 in most places but take the -14 if you can get a low number like +100.
No team in college football has had a tougher schedule than Arkansas, who has faced Top 20 teams in four of the last five weeks and will now host an angry Auburn team that fell out of the national rankings this week after losing to Georgia.
The Tigers have defeated Arkansas five straight times, including a 30-28 home win last season. Auburn has been an underdog three times this season, beating LSU by 5 as a +3 underdog and losing to Penn State and Georgia, a pair of top seven teams. The Tigers are 3-3 ATS this season.
Arkansas is 5-1 ATS and have only been favored twice all season before Saturday.
Arkansas knocked off Texas and Texas A&M before losing back-to-back games to Georgia and Ole Miss. The Georgia game ended 37-0, but the Razorbacks lost 52-51 to Mississippi.
Six of the last seven Auburn-Arkansas games have gone over with Saturday’s total set at 53.5.
The college football game of the week will feature the #1 Georgia Bulldogs hosting the #11 Kentucky Wildcats. Both teams are 6-0 and in somewhat surprising positions. No one expected Georgia to be number one this week but they took over the top spot after Alabama was stunned by Texas A&M. No one expected Kentucky to be in the top 25, let alone knocking on the door of the top 10, but they are already 4-0 in SEC play.
The Wildcats have already pulled off an historic win over the Gators this season for only the second time since the 1980’s and will now face a team it has lost to 11 consecutive times. These games have been defensive struggles these past two seasons with Georgia winning 21- and 14-3.
Georgia is allowing just 5.5 points per game, after thrashing Auburn 34-10 last week. The Bulldogs have won five straight games by 24+ points. Kentucky has four wins by 7 points or less, but knocked off LSU 42-21 last week.
Georgia has seen Stetson Bennett and JT Daniels split time at QB, with the duo combining for 1,313 yards and 13 TD.
Georgia is 5-1 ATS and has been favored by over two touchdowns in every game this year since opening the season as +3 underdogs to Clemson and winning by 7.
Kentucky is a +23.5 road underdog at Georgia. The Wildcats have only been an underdog once before this season, beating Florida by 7 as a +7.5 underdog. Kentucky has won eight straight games dating back to last season and is 6-2 ATS in that span and 5-1 ATS this season.
Georgia has already demolished four SEC teams this season and it’s not clear that Kentucky is better than Arkansas or Auburn who the Bulldogs have dispatched these past two weeks.
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