5 college football bets to take to the bank in Conference Championship Week
The 2018 college football season has led to this, Conference Championship Week, and these are the bets you can count on to pull through this week.
The week that college football fans have been waiting for and watching their teams play for has finally arrived. It’s conference championship week throughout the country, meaning that the two best (or teams that topped the standings) in each conference will be going head-to-head to try and claim supremacy. The results are almost always entertaining, and the 2018 season is no different looking at the matchups.
For starters, the SEC Championship Game will be a rematch of last year’s National Championship Game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and Georgia Bulldogs. We know how wonderful the title game was a year ago, so college football fans are surely pining to see if Kirby Smart can exact revenge and knock off the unbeaten and seemingly unbeatable group that he used to coach.
Meanwhile, there are also some rematches from some of the best games that we saw in the regular season in these conference championship games. Another Red River Shootout between the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners is set for the Big 12 Championship Game and the AAC Championship Game will run back the Memphis Tigers vs. UCF Knights matchup that was decided in one-point, comeback fashion in the regular season.
If nothing else, this conference championship week in college football should provide a plethora of entertainment for fans. However, if you’re looking at the odds and trying to figure out where you should be allocating your capital, that can be a much more daunting prospect. Luckily, we’re here to help you out with that.
These are the five bets you can take to the bank in the college football conference championships.
Note: All odds courtesy of Odds Shark.
5. ACC Championship, Clemson vs. Pittsburgh (+27.5)
It shouldn’t come as a great shock to college football fans how heavily the Clemson Tigers are favored over the Pittsburgh Panthers in the ACC Championship Game. Not only has Clemson simply been blowing teams out this season, but they’ve been far and away the class of the conference with seemingly no other in the team capable of challenging the Tigers.
On the flipside, there is this Pitt team that, after a brutal start to the season in non-conference play, went on a run to win their division in the ACC, but then followed up that run and clinching a spot in the title game by going on the road against the Miami Hurricanes in their season-finale and getting embarrassed to the tune of a 24-3 loss. Thus, the fact that Clemson is favored by almost four touchdowns isn’t that surprising.
Having said that, when you look at the late-season run from Pittsburgh, one thing that stands out in a big way is how closely they’ve played everyone, regardless of if they win or lose. They played awfully against Miami, but still only lost by 21. What’s more, they only lost to Notre Dame by five in the middle of the season as well.
For my money, I don’t think that the Panthers have a snowball’s chance in the Sahara to beat the Tigers on Saturday night. While that may be the case, though, this is a team that has shown they get up for big games and play better teams closer than they probably should based on their talent level. As such, I think they cover this massive spread, even if it’s still a sizeable and decisive loss.