College football is back and the Oddsbay handicapping team has a strong underdog play in Saturday night action between Memphis and Mississippi State. No matter the season or the sport, Oddsbay has you covered with the best sports betting coverage anywhere!
MEMPHIS AT MISSISSIPPI STATE—4:00 PM PACIFIC
Mississippi State can be excused if their focus isn’t on this game against non-conference foe Memphis. The Bulldogs go immediately into their SEC slate starting on Thursday night against Auburn, which will be a huge nationally televised ESPN game. They’ll then play at LSU and then back home against Georgia. As a result, this game becomes more of a chore than anything else as the team looks ahead to their “real” season opener under the bright TV lights. Second year head coach Dan Mullen facing arguably the most high profile game of his career will be content to put this win in the books, keep his starters healthy for the Auburn game and wont’ be worried about covering this big price.
Memphis will automatically be a better team this year due to their firing of Tommy West as head coach. There may not be a less competent coach in Division I college football than West, who formerly ran the Clemson program into the ground. West is not only a horrible coach but a generally loathsome character. While at Clemson, he pandered to redneck racists who had issue with an African-American playing quarterback for the Tigers. That quarterback happened to be Nealon Greene, who went on to become the school’s all time leading yardage gainer and would go on to become an All Star in the CFL. Had he been six inches taller (Greene was a relatively diminutive 5’10”), he’d have been an All Pro NFL QB—think Steve McNair with a better head for the game. I lived in South Carolina during this era, and the persistent memory I have of Greene is him limping back to the huddle after his offensive line ran for cover, but turning a sack for a loss into a several yard rushing pickup by sheer toughness and force of will. The only thing that kept West from being burnt in effigy by the Clemson faithful during his tenure is that they were still mad at former coach Ken Hatfield, whom they blamed for the decline in the program ("Howard built it. Ford tilled it. Hatfield killed it"). West showed his characteristic lack of class on his way out the door at Memphis, blaming everyone except himself for the school’s dismal performance:
''At some point in time you've got to say, 'We've got to help this football program. We've got to do the things necessary to make this what we want it or do away with it."
The irony in this, of course, is that while Memphis doesn’t give football its highest athletic priority West couldn’t get the job done at Clemson which live and dies for football and gives the team truckloads of money and insane support in every other way. Uh, Tommy, hate to break this to you but it’s not the schools that are the problem here.
Memphis hired former LSU running backs coach/recruiting specialist and Bulldog alum Larry Porter and he’s the perfect choice to sweep up the mess that West left behind. We look for Memphis to bounce back from their 3-8 season last year, much in the same way that Tommy Bowden was able to go 6-6 and get a Peach Bowl bid with the same talent that West got himself fired with the year before . Memphis has a lot of work to do this season but against a team with a losing record last year (albeit in the SEC) that isn’t a good betting favorite (1-4 ATS/2-3 SU L3 years) this price is just too high considering the made-to-order scheduling spot. The Tigers have always held their own in the series from an ATS standpoint (6-6 ATS L12 overall including 4-2 ATS at Starkville) and against a Mississippi State team on a 1-5 ATS run in non-conference games we’ll take the points.
PLAY MEMPHIS +21’ OVER MISSISSIPPI STATE
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