NCAAF

College Football Bowl Betting Guide: How to Bet the First Day of Bowl Games

Brandon Gdula  —  @gdula13 Dec 16th, 2022

Two games kick off college football bowl action on Friday, December 16th.

First, we have the HomeTown Lenders Bahamas Bowl and then the Duluth Trading Cure Bowl.

How can we bet these games (based on college football odds from FanDuel Sportsbook)?

Miami (Ohio) vs. UAB

UAB Blazers Moneyline (-400)
Over 45.5 (-110)

The opener for today is between the 6-6 Miami (Ohio) RedHawks and the 6-6 UAB Blazers.

UAB is a 10.5-point favorite, and our model at numberFire thinks that's pretty appropriate. It's projecting UAB to win 30.5 to 17.0 in this matchup.

UAB ended the season ranked a respectable 70th in offensive SP+ and 54th in defensive SP+. FootballOutsiders' FEI ratings puts their offense 67th but their defense worse at 72nd. They may or may not have stud running back DeWayne McBride for this matchup.

As for Miami-Ohio, their offense is 120th in FEI, and the defense is still worse than UAB's by any measure (86th). It's worth noting that, while their offense is still only 128th in offensive SP+, the RedHawks' defense is 38th in SP+.

Frankly, the best bet here is the UAB moneyline (-400), yet if you want to avoid those odds, then the better angles are the over and for UAB to make good on a double-digit spread.

Texas-San Antonio vs. Troy

Troy Trojans +2.5 (-110)
Under 56.5 (-110)

In the second game of the day, we get two 11-2 teams squaring up, yet both are built differently.

The Texas-San Antonio Roadrunners boast a top-25 offense by both SP+ and FEI but are outside the top 80 defensively in both stats.

For the Troy Trojans, they ended the season 11-2 through an elite defense (8th in SP+ and 35th in FEI) despite an offense ranked, on average, 90.5 across those two stats.

In total, our model thinks this is basically a game that plays 27-26 in UTSA's favor, which leaves room for Troy to cover (59.4% likely).

And given the combination of offense and defense, there should be points but probably not 57 of them. Our model has the under as 57.3% likely.