College Football Odds: Hypothetical Alabama-UMass Spread Is Comical
Also, what's 'Bama vs. Boston College and UConn?
Kenny White has been making college football power ratings for over 40 years.
The legendary Las Vegas oddsmaker has a tangible number on every single player on every team, and he uses those ratings to help compute point spreads for sportsbooks. White currently has a 134.5 rating on Alabama and 130.5 on Georgia, which means Alabama would be a four-point favorite on a neutral field.
Even I can perform that simple subtraction.
I thought it would be fascinating to dive a little deeper and have White make hypothetical betting lines for Alabama and Georgia against the following New England college football teams: Boston College, Harvard, Yale, UConn and UMass.
Alabama
-24 vs. Boston College
-49.5 vs. Harvard
-51.5 vs. Yale
-58.5 vs. UConn
-61 vs. UMass
Georgia
-20 vs. Boston College
-45.5 vs. Harvard
-47.5 vs. Yale
-54.5 vs. UConn
-57 vs. UMass
That's not a typo, Alabama would be a 61-point favorite against UMass.
"64-3 would be my projected final score," White said. "The numbers don't mean as much when they get this high. You don't know what's going to happen in games with huge point spreads. Alabama would pull all the starters in the second half and call the dogs off. So it really just depends on how big the first half lead is."
If you bet a game like Alabama-UMass, you're literally at the mercy of Crimson Tide head college football coach Nick Saban. If it's a sandwich game between two strong SEC foes, maybe UMass bettors get lucky and Saban is content with a 56-3 win.
If Alabama is coming off a loss, though, 70-0 wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility.
"Oh, they could win by 80 if they needed to," White cracked. "Instead of just playing prevent defense in the second half, Alabama could still blitz and bring pressure to create turnovers. And they would be trying to score on offense. It would get ugly.
"Alabama goes up 42-0 at halftime in games like that and then they call off the dogs. They need to stay healthy because they have bigger fish to fry. But even Alabama's third string is better than UConn and UMass' first string.
"The point spread always keeps things interesting."
