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Early Lines

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The Golden Nugget casino released its early college football lines for 2011 on Friday and Oklahoma State fans might not be real pleased with how Vegas views the Cowbots right now.

First of all, let’s establish something: Vegas usually awards three points to whichever team is playing at home. So if West Virginia and Oklahoma State were to play a game in Stillwater where OSU was favored by three, essentially, Vegas is saying “these two teams are equally matched, they have the same amount of talent and coaching will not sway this matchup either way, here’s a field goal to the home team.” Even though coaching would absolutely sway that game one way…we don’t have time for that right now though.

Having said that, here are the five lines listed for OSU:

Oklahoma State (-8) at Tulsa (+8)
Oklahoma State (+6) at Texas A&M (-6)
Oklahoma State (+3) at Texas (-3)
Oklahoma State (+2.5) at Mizzou (-2.5)
Oklahoma (-2) at Oklahoma State (+2)

Why are these the only games listed so far? I have no idea. Why are we even making lines for games on June 13? Again, no clue.

I have no problem with the Missouri line or the OU line really. Mizzou is crazy at home and OSU will be coming off the Texas game, it’s not a great situation. OU by 2 in Stillwater? Completely fair, probably more fair than it should be actually. Until Gundy beats OU you can’t expect to be favored over them.

Okay, let’s get to the other three. First, OSU is only giving 8 to Tulsa. Eight. Ocho. A TD + 2 pt. conversion. Against a team they beat by 37 last year and could have put 80 on. Tulsa lost its coach, OSU is returning mostly everyone…um am I missing something here?

Getting six from A&M is a little less ridiculous, especially considering it is in fact a night game at Kyle Field and we all know how that goes. But it’s hard for me to get on board with any preseason team in the Top 10 getting six from anyone.

The Texas line is embarrassing for all parties involved. Have we just erased the Garrett Gilbert 2010 season from our collective memory? I mean we are talking about the same guy who took 18 sacks and tossed 17 picks last year for a team that runs the ball as much as it throws, right? For an OSU team coming off its best season ever to be an underdog against Texas, which went 5-7 last year (!!), I mean I don’t even have words for this.

The bizarre thing to me is that this book has OU favored in all its games, effectively making them the title favorites, but the closest line is the OSU one. So they’re basically saying: “OSU will give OU the best game of anyone in their schedule but they cannot beat these other four other teams who won’t play as well against OU.” Either they think BPS has the biggest home field advantage in the history of college athletics or they’re just making up numbers.

If I had a pair I’d go slap a couple hundy down on the Cowboys in Austin, but last time I did that we almost choked away the first half of 2010 to A&M who was playing with a 1-armed quarterback at the time. So I guess I’ll probably pass.

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