ACC Betting Preview: Deciphering where newer is better
With apologies to graduates and fans of SMU, California, and Stanford, the ACC’s additions amidst the massive conference shake-up, due to the dissolution of the PAC-12, are, to put it mildly, lacklustre. In fact, if you want to #DoYourOwnResearch into college football politics and economics, the ACC’s doing all they can just to hang on to their biggest brands. So, while some things have changed, the odds for the ACC title look pretty similar to the last few years.
Clemson’s won seven of the last nine ACC titles, but after a few down seasons nationally, and Florida State’s emergence last year, they’ve fallen out of favor from when they lingered around even-money to win the conference for the better part of a decade. Ironically, one of the recent punching bags for Tigers’ fans, D.J. Uiagalalei, is on his third school, taking over from Jordan Travis at Florida State. I’ll punch down on “DJU” as well, passing on backing any favorite with him as the starting quarterback.
There’s a pretty clear divide after the seventh team, SMU, and the also-rans of the ACC. Improvement in the upper-half of the conference, and the elimination of divisions, makes it less likely that we’ll see a longshot make the ACC title game, as we have so frequently over the last few years.
Team Rating Nationally
Since you can read about how point spreads are built in the NFL in an earlier post on this very Substack, we don’t need to rehash the entire thing here, other than to note that there’s a different divisor in college football. For me, that number is 63. It’s far greater than the NFL’s (27) since the best college football team is that much better than the worst FBS squad. Ie. If peak Clemson wanted to beat the worst version of UMass by 10+ touchdowns, they could. It’s just not necessarily their goal, so going back to 2019 and making that line Clemson -63 is as high as I’d be willing to go.
Our rating system likes Wake Forest slightly more than the conference title odds, but that’s only relevant as we note that everyone but Virginia and Stanford are within two touchdowns of top-rated FSU. If the Seminoles, with at least nine new starters, take a larger step back than the market thinks, there’s a number of teams that could jump up and bite them any given week. With just eight conference games, two losses in the league could up-end the season.
Best bets
Miami (+440, FanDuel)
How excited should you be about Miami, and their influx of transfer talent that gave them the third-highest TARP (transfer activity and returning production) nationally? I wouldn’t go as far saying they’re a contender to actually win the national title, and Week 1’s matchup in The Swamp is ominous for a bet on their season win total at 9.5. However, they get FSU at home, Louisville as their toughest conference road game, and skip Clemson altogether. They could easily go 10-2 overall and 9-1 in the conference.
You hope Mario Cristobal has done some self-study this offseason, and the Hurricanes - undefeated when they refused to kneel out a win against Georgia Tech and got burned - don’t blow a game they have won.
I’d like to think going and getting Cameron Ward from Washington State means they want to be more aggressive on offense.
The Canes are loaded with upperclassmen in the trenches, and are built in opposite fashion of Clemson, who continue to refuse to use the transfer portal and bring back much of the same group that went 8-4 last year. Should they meet in the ACC Championship, Miami may have the higher rating by the first week of December.
Regular season win total
North Carolina: Under 7.5 (-105, FanDuel)
The Week 1 Thursday-nighter with Minnesota is going to be miserable for those of us with the under on both the Tar Heels’ and Golden Gophers’ win total, since NCAA rules state that someone has to win.
Like we did for Minnesota in the Big Ten preview, just to be safe, we’ll give the win here to UNC. In fact, even if they start 4-0, I’m so down on the Heels that we’ll dare them to go 4-4 down the stretch.
You almost have to go out of your way to underperform when you have five years of future NFL quarterbacking between Sam Howell and Drake Maye. Mack Brown winning two-thirds of those games isn’t enough.
Of course, the reason they didn’t make the best use of those quarterbacks, is because the Heels haven’t been able to stop anybody defensively. Why would that change this year? With vagabond quarterback Max Johnson trying to make it work on his third team, but likely asked to overcome an annually awful defense, winning two-thirds of their games this year isn’t likely.
SMU: Over 8.5 (+110, Bet365)
I don’t know how familiar you are with mid-80’s primetime television dramas, but I’m told there’s money in Dallas. The Mustangs move to the ACC isn’t likely to equate to an oil-strike, but they’ve put enough money into the team ahead of their ACC debut (which they did for the money, of course) that they expect to be competitive right away.
SMU gets three freebies before hosting TCU - a Horned Frogs team I’m down on - in Week 4 as likely touchdown favorites. Even if they drop that game, and the next two against Florida State (PK) and at Louisville (-5.5), things get easier down the stretch.
Their final six opponents are all rated in the bottom eight of the conference. Eight wins seems like the floor, for a team that was top-10 in defensive EPA last year and return Preston Stone and his 28:6 TD-to-INT ratio. So, we’ll take a better than even-money bet that the Mustangs can storm the ACC and get to at least nine wins.