Wild Wagering Trends for College Football Week 8

In Week 7 of the college football season, we saw a number of unranked programs wreak havoc on the AP Top-25. Most notably, No. 2 ranked Iowa fell 24-7 to the Purdue Boilermakers in one of the biggest upsets of the season. An unranked Auburn team smoked No. 17 Arkansas, Utah beat No. 18 Arizona State, Baylor defeated No. 19 BYU, and LSU surprised No. 20 Florida. 

With all that and more behind us, let's look forward to Week 8. What can we bettors expect to see this week based on the trends? Lets’ explore three of the more eyebrow-raising trends heading into the weekend. 

Syracuse is 5-0 ATS in last five games, Virginia Tech 0-4 ATS in last four

The Orange lost for the third straight week to an ACC opponent when Clemson beat them 17-14. This is important because  Syracuse covered that spread, along with each of their previous two conference losses. All three came by 3 points in what had to be a torturous last few weeks for Cuse. From a betting perspective, however, this team has been on fire. Syracuse has covered their last five games in a row and plays Virginia Tech next. 

The Hokies enter this game on a terrible ATS slide, having failed to cover their last four games in a row. VT got crushed last weekend by Pitt, 7-28, and lost as favorites to Notre Dame the week before. The week before that, a big win over Richmond but they failed to cover the 29.5 point spread. 

With a 6-1 ATS record on the year, Syracuse opened as 3-point underdogs on the road against VT in week 8. 

The under is 9-3 in Penn State and Illinois’ combined 13 games this season

If the betting trends for Penn State and Illinois are to be believed, oddsmakers have been overestimating each team’s offense all season long. So far this year, Penn State is cashing 66.7% of under bets while 83.3% of Illinois games have failed to eclipse the total. 

The two teams have covered just three times combined all season and meet in Week 8 at Beaver Stadium. As an away team, the Illini have not hit a single over in 2021. At home, the under is 3-1 for PSU. A lot of this has to do with the Nittany Lions’ defense and not issues scoring, but that doesn’t change the numbers. 

Wake Forest is 6-0 SU but 2-4 ATS, Army 2-0 ATS as an Underdog

No. 16 Wake Forest is on the road this week in West Point to play Army. Despite a spotless record on the season in terms of outright wins, the Demon Decons have not been covering games. Wake covered just twice this year, once as a favorite and once as an underdog, to Florida State and Virginia respectively. 

While Army’s overall ATS record is not that much better at 3-4, they are a perfect 2-0 ATS when playing as an underdog. In their games against Georgia State (+2.5) and last week against Wisconsin (+14.0) the Black Knights were able to keep pace and cover by a difference of 43.5. To be fair, that number is a little inflated due to a Week 1 victory over Georgia State as a 2.5 underdog. Army won by 33.