LAS VEGAS – The largest early betting line moves in Week 11 of the college football season so far have involved smaller schools, like Georgia Southern and Appalachian State. However, it’s the bigger schools playing in much more meaningful games that are expected to attract the most volume on Saturday, according to Johnny Avello, The Wynn’s executive director of race & sports operations. SEC teams Auburn and Alabama face must-win situations in order to stay in the race to make College Football Playoff, and Ohio State vs. Michigan State is the most important game of the season for the Big Ten.
Georgia Southern has jumped from a 9-point road favorite visiting Texas State up to -14 at The Wynn, and Appalachian State opened Pick’em hosting Louisiana-Monroe and was -4 as of Friday afternoon. Those have been the biggest line moves in addition to Northwestern going from a 2.5-point home favorite to a 1.5-point underdog against Michigan, which was discussed here earlier in the week .
But Avello said he expects some heavy action to come in Saturday at The Wynn on this week’s biggest games. Six games in particular figure to shape next week’s College Football Playoff rankings, including Texas A&M at Auburn, Alabama at LSU, Kansas State at TCU, Ohio State at Michigan State, Notre Dame at Arizona State and Oregon at Utah.
“It’s incredible how many games we have this week that are going to decide who’s moving on and who’s gone,” Avello told The Linemakers on Sporting News on Friday. “This is a separation week. This is a game that says you have a chance to move on to the final four or you don’t.”
“So it’s a good week for college football, and those are the games customers and the players will concentrate on. Your wiseguys are still going to look at secondary schools, but they are the only ones that will be looking at them.”
Auburn opened as a 20-point home favorite against a struggling Texas A&M team and moved up to -23 on Friday afternoon. Avello said he thinks bettors are simply bailing on the Aggies with them losing three of their last four games and failing to cover the spread in five straight.
“You’ve got Auburn-A&M, that game’s gone up a little,” Avello said. “Nobody believes in Texas A&M anymore. (Kenny) Hill’s out, they won last week with the backup quarterback, he did ok. There’s just no faith in this team. The feeling from the bettors is that this team ends up getting blown out.”
Michigan State opened as a 3-point home favorite against Ohio State and jumped to -4 briefly on Friday before coming back down to -3.5. The winner of this Big Ten matchup will likely have the best shot of any team from the conference to get into the College Football Play, although there are no guarantees.
“I think there’s a takeback (on Ohio State) at some point because there’s going to be a lot of Ohio State believers out there,” Avello said. “This is quite the rivalry, and it’s not like Michigan State has got the best offense. They’re ok, they’re getting better, but still this is a tough spot.”
Ohio State-Michigan State is among four games in primetime that should get a heavy volume of betting action, according to Avello. The others are Kansas State-TCU, Alabama-LSU and Oregon-Utah, all kicking off at 7:30 p.m. ET or later on Saturday night.
“There are a lot of later games that have an impact on the college football championship this weekend, and I think those are the games that are going to draw the most money,” Avello said. “Come Saturday, when the customers come in to play these games, they won’t even be looking at any of these (smaller) games because there are just so many other good games this week to concentrate on.”
“All those games (with the big line moves) we just spoke about are all games that will take very limited action this weekend. So what we have already is probably what we’re going to end up with.”
Other major Week 11 college football line moves
--Tulsa from -10.5 up to -14 at home vs. SMU
--Boise State from -16 up to -19 at New Mexico
--Penn State from -4 to -6.5 at Indiana
--Old Dominion from -2 up to -4.5 at home vs. Florida International
--Arizona from -14.5 up to -17 at home vs. Colorado
--Georgia Tech from -6 down to -3.5 at North Carolina State
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