Oddsmakers Down on Oklahoma State After Releasing Early Win Totals, Can Cowboys Surprise with a Strong Start?

Mike Gundy is one of the few things that didn’t change in Stillwater this offseason, but oddsmakers didn’t recognize a huge difference between the past and the present with their early win totals.

FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM and Circa Sports have all recently released win totals for the Big 12 and Oklahoma State was the only program to finish with the lowest line in each sportsbook.

FanDuel and BetMGM set the Cowboys’ initial line at 5.5 wins, while Circa Sports and DraftKings have the line at five and 4.5, respectively. Arizona and West Virginia kept the Pokes company at the bottom of three books each.

Big 12 Win Totals (Average of All Four Sports Books):

8.5 — Arizona State, Kansas State, Texas Tech
7.5 — Baylor, BYU, Iowa State, Kansas, Utah
6.5 — TCU
6.38 — Cincinnati, Colorado
6 — Houston
5.75 — UCF
5.38 — West Virginia
5.25 — Arizona
5.13 — Oklahoma State

This time of year, it is hard to tell if strength of schedule is the chicken or the egg when it comes to win totals.

It’s probably a bit of both, which helps explain why the Cowboys sit at the bottom. Oklahoma State’s Big 12 opponents have a combined line of just under 63 wins this season. That ranks as the fourth-hardest conference schedule in the Big 12.

Add in a road game against national champion contender Oregon with its consensus line of 10.5 wins, tied for the highest in the country, and it’s easier to see why oddsmakers might be down on Gundy’s group.

Since not all nonconference schedules are created equally, conference championship odds can help us evaluate how much the nonconference games are impacting the overall win totals.

FanDuel’s conference championship odds paint a slightly more positive picture as Oklahoma State sits tied for the 13th-best Big 12 odds at +5000 alongside UCF and ahead of West Virginia and Arizona, which sit tied for last at +6500.

So if the Cowboys were playing another non-power conference opponent or maybe even a team closer to 2024’s Arkansas instead of the Ducks then Oklahoma State’s win total might be higher.

Texas Tech doesn’t play any power conference teams in the nonconference this fall, and Arizona State’s lone such game comes against a Mississippi State team expected to win somewhere around 3.5 games. Kansas State faces Arizona in the nonconference, but the Wildcats, Red Raiders and Sun Devils are all tied +600 odds in the Big 12 title race. Since all three were tied with 8.5-win totals, that suggests oddsmakers don’t see any of the nonconference schedules drastically different.

Meanwhile, a pair of 7.5-win teams, Baylor and Utah sit at +650. 

Utah’s big nonconference game comes on the road at UCLA (5.5 win total), but Baylor’s situation is a lot more interesting. The Bears host Auburn (7.5 win total) before traveling to SMU (8.5-win total) the very next week.

In both cases, especially Baylor’s, it sounds like oddsmakers believe these two teams might be as talented as Arizona State, Texas Tech and Kansas State, but their overall win totals are being adjusted to account for possible nonconference losses.

There’s a sizeable gap before the next team, BYU (+950), shows up, suggesting these five (Texas Tech, Arizona State, Kansas State, Baylor and Utah) could belong in a class of their own in the Big 12.

Oklahoma State is one of 11 teams to face three of these five in conference play, while Utah actually faces each of the other four.

Oklahoma State’s toughest stretch of the season comes late when the Cowboys travel to Texas Tech and Kansas in back-to-back weeks, then take a bye week ahead of a home showdown with Kansas State on Nov. 15.

If Oklahoma State is going to hit the over and win six games this fall, the Cowboys need to capitalize on a relatively easy schedule during the first seven weeks.

The nonconference portion starts with UT-Martin, a trip to Oregon, and then a bye week ahead of Tulsa. The Cowboys open up conference play at home against a Baylor team, which apparently deserves more respect this season.

However, then Oklahoma State gets two matchups with fellow bottom-five teams in the conference, starting with a road game at Arizona on Oct. 4 and a home matchup with Houston on Oct. 11.