College Football Best Bets: Week 5 (2020)

While two Power 5 conferences still have yet to play a game, college football felt more “normal” last week than it had in any of the prior three. Between two top-10 upsets of No. 3 Oklahoma and No. 6 LSU — and a thrilling overtime shootout between No. 8 Texas and Texas Tech — last Saturday had many of the exciting finishes that we had been missing up to that point.

Sadly, COVID-19 continues to affect the sport, as just, recently Notre Dame announced 34 percent of their roster is in isolation and unavailable to participate in team activities. We will continue to have cancellations and postponements each week, but if the games that are played are anything like last Saturday’s slate, we are in for an entertaining day.

Here are my top-four plays for Week 5 in college football.

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Best Bets for Week 5: College Football

(odds courtesy of FanDuel)
Last Week: 1-3
YTD: 6-6

Texas A&M at Alabama 1st Half (-9.5)
After one week of analyzing SEC football and the Alabama Crimson Tide in particular, we are taking a “live and learn” attitude into their second game. Alabama could have named their score against Missouri last week. They kicked off as 27.5-point favorites and were on their way to an easy cover after building a 28-3 halftime lead. However, Nick Saban benched quarterback Mac Jones and a number of other starters in the third quarter, and Alabama slogged their way to a 38-19 win and a non-cover.

The more the game played out, the more Saban looked like a genius. He has the 13th-ranked team in Texas A&M coming to Tuscaloosa this week, so he likely did not want to show everything in his arsenal. In addition, with the way Tua Tagovailoa was injured last year with the game in hand, Saban will be more likely to rest starters in the future to see what he has in many of his backups. Lastly, seeing many defensive miscues with backups in the game gives him something to get on his team about all week in practice, as his starters played near-flawless football. All of this adds to us learning from our mistakes of betting Alabama for the full game last week, and instead, we’ll take them to dominate the first half while at full strength and to be up double digits heading into the locker room.

PICK: Alabama 1st Half Line -9.5

Navy at Air Force (+6.5)
Nothing encapsulates the strangeness of 2020 more than Air Force playing a two-game college football schedule. They are home to Navy this weekend and then play at Army on November 7th. That’s it. Part of me understands that Navy has the advantage of having two games under their belt and are more accustomed to live-action than Air Force will be in their season debut. However, it could be argued Air Force has a scouting advantage, as they’ve seen Navy play twice, Navy hasn’t seen them play at all. A similar situation happened last week when a Duke team that had already played twice went to Virginia for their season opener. Virginia ended up winning 38-20 and covered easily as four-point favorites.

However, the biggest reason for liking Air Force is the bulletin board material that Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo provided for this matchup. Not only does Air Force deserve to play for the Commander-in-Chief trophy, but they will show why they will be more of a threat to win it than oddsmakers are giving them credit for. The underdog is 10-1 ATS in the last 11 games between service academies, and we like Air Force to cover another spread as a home underdog in this one.

PICK: Air Force +6.5

Arkansas (+17.5) at Mississippi State
The Mississippi State Bulldogs are riding high off of a huge 44-34 upset of the previously sixth-ranked LSU Tigers in Baton Rouge. However, our thinking is that this won’t be thought of as such a big upset at the season’s end. LSU is clearly a different team than the one who won last year’s national championship. LSU quarterback Myles Brennan is not Joe Burrow, and it is clear LSU misses the services of Ja’Marr Chase, who opted out of the season as well as all of their other graduates and draft picks.

Mississippi State quarterback K.J. Costello is the talk of the nation after throwing for an SEC record 623 yards and five touchdowns. Mike Leach and his “air raid” offense looks like it has a home in the SEC, but I think that the Bulldogs exposed an LSU team that is weaker than what we thought. Also, the following trend from Chris Fallica on Twitter does not help Mississippi State’s case.

PICK: Arkansas +17.5

Oklahoma at Iowa State (+7.5)
This bet doesn’t have as much to do with Oklahoma losing as 28-point favorites against Kansas State last week as you would think. Instead, it has more to do with Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell’s ATS success against Oklahoma, as he is 4-0 ATS as double-digit underdogs. In addition, Oklahoma is 1-6 ATS in their last seven conference games.

The weather is projected to be a chilly 42 degrees, which plays into the more physical Iowa State’s hands. Oklahoma quarterback Spencer Rattler has had to hear all week why he has not continued the success that Jalen Hurts, Kyler Murray, and Baker Mayfield had before him. In due time I think he will look more comfortable in Lincoln Riley’s offense, but a trip to Ames is a bad spot when coming off a season-opening loss. The Cyclones do not have a slouch of a quarterback themselves in Brock Purdy, who ranked first in the Big 12 in pass attempts, completions, and yards in 2019.

While the betting public is expected to jump on the Sooners in a bounce-back spot, the contrarian play of the Cyclones who have had success playing Oklahoma tighter than oddsmakers have projected is the right play.

PICK: Iowa State +7.5

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Mike Spector is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeSpector01.