2024 COLLEGE FOOTBALL PREVIEW: OKLAHOMA DRIL

Turning to the wisdom of the internet's greatest shitposter to find profitable needles in the perilous haystack of college football futures bets

Aug 22, 2024

Friends, countrymen, subscribers both paid and free - WELCOME BACK to your home for hunting #value, the Square Attack newsletter! I humbly submit myself before you, dear readers, to thank you all for joining me in the passenger seat of this silly little writing project’s third rocket trip around the sun. We’ve dabbled and dalliance’d in all sorts of gambling weirdness over the last two-plus years, from obscure Super Bowl props to grudge-driven Masters matchup bets. This year, however, we’re taking a page out of the Bain playbook, deepening our focus on product-market fit and serving our most engaged consumers to maximize shareholder value (which is to say, writing about only the purest, most uncut iteration of the drug that is sports gambling): it’s gonna be all college football, all the time.

How you’ve chosen to spend the dog days between March Madness and now depends on the particular cut of your degenerate jib. Some of you have scratched the itch by diving headlong into the Paris Olympics like an E. coli-hungry triathlete into the Seine, cheering on longshots (France +700 in men’s surfing: ✅) and favorites (Noah Lyles -470 in the 200 meter: ❌) alike. Some of you have channeled your inner Nate Silver by reading the political tea leaves and “investing” in election futures (your Joe Biden +175 ticket might be deader than the bear RFK Jr. dumped in Central Park, but we’ll see if former defensive coordinator Tim Walz can convince his running mate that great teams cover the electoral vote spread).

Tim, my DMs are open if you want your own themed Square Attack pick.

But all of you, I’m sure, have been looking forward to the moment that we find ourselves nearing - the return of college football.

What a spring and summer it has been in the CFB world since the last time you heard from your loyal Editor-In-Chief. The total number of players entering the transfer portal crept up to nearly 3,900 in the spring window, the clock officially struck midnight on the Pac-12 as we knew it, and EA Sports dropped the cultural equivalent of the Barbie movie for men ages 18-35 with a bug-ridden, “definitely not a re-skin of Madden” Frankenstein’s monster of a college football video game.

During this stretch, I’ve been preparing for this season’s battle with the books like Rhaenyra Targaryen in Season 2 of House of the Dragon. I’ve sought council from sources far and wide, by listening to several days worth of various CFB podcasts. I’ve taken a deep dive into the histories, by reading conference recaps and previews from sites with ChatGPT-generated names like “CollegeFootballNews.com”. I’ve even forged tenuous alliances, by desperately begging the #ValueHunters group chat for access to alternate regular season wins lines at sportsbooks of questionable repute.

Two good seasons spread across five years? What is this, Oregon State football?

Despite a cacophony of information across varying channels, I consistently found myself returning to dig elbow-deep into the cesspool that The Artist Formerly Known As Twitter has become, tracking down gambling tidbits from the nerd + jock alliance whispering in the corner at Elon Musk’s awkward house party that’s running desperately low on beer, and that’s when the idea for the theme of this season’s preview struck me.

Among those who inhabit Weird Twitter™️, there stands alone a single user whose reputation exceeds the rest. If you’ve capital-L capital-O Logged On in the past decade, you’ve come across his work, and the extent to which you grok his barrage of often-obscene, always-chaotic non sequiturs correlates directly to the amount of brain rot you’ve accrued by spending time the limited time you have on this earth scrolling through humanity’s greatest and worst internet achievement. The poster in question is “@dril”, who (depending on who you ask) either invented or perfected the concept of achieving viral status through sheer oddity. He even spent some time in the news this week after one of his tweets was included in a Kamala Harris press release (spoiler alert: that did not go so well).

If you’re completely confused right now, A) good and B) here’s an excellent profile from The Ringer of the man behind the curtain. All you really need to know, however, is that similar to last year’s I Think You Should Leave-based college football preview, the Square Attack resonates with the short-form stylings of Dril so deeply that it only makes sense to apply some of his most famous missives to 30 (!!!) preseason regular season win total bets across the CFB landscape.

To wit:

Well said. Let’s get into it!

Disclaimer: NFA, DYOR, BOL. All totals and odds accurate as of whenever we happened to look them up. All times Pacific. This newsletter often shatters the Gmail size limit. Read on your desktop or mobile browser for the full Square Attack experience.

REGULAR SEASON WIN TOTALS

Alabama u9.5 (-120)

We begin our tour through a new-look 2024 college football landscape with a quick stop at the tomb of the coaching career put together by the sport’s figurehead of the last 15ish years. Sure, they stuffed world-beating Georgia into a locker in last year’s SEC Championship Game, and sure, they bring in a coach in Kalen DeBoer who appears to have an actual medical allergy to losing, but we are talking about Nick Saban here. The idea that a team can lose a generation-defining leader and not have to deal with at least some amount of downward adjustment simply does not jive with my gambling philosophy. They face a top-10 most difficult schedule in the nation (per Phil Steele, whose annual CFB preview magazine I will be referencing heavily throughout), lost 31 players to the transfer portal, and their toughest five games are either on the road (Wisconsin, Tennessee, LSU, Oklahoma) or against Georgia coming off a bye. Unfortunately for DeBoer, Jalen Milroe simply isn’t Michael Penix Jr., and this team is due for a regression back towards the mean. Here’s to hoping we at least get to crack a Miller Lite while enjoying a great season of TV analysis from Saban, though.

Arizona State u4.5 (-173)

The NCAA has spent the majority of the last several offseasons slamming their collective genitalia in the car door that is the United States judicial system, but they still get to cling with gnarled fingers to their proprietary Nerd Metric in pursuit of the long-dead concept of the “student athlete”: the Academic Progress Rate. Did you think that we were going to be talking about academics two entries into this preview? Me neither! But I was going to make an “lol, ASU football players dumb” joke here only to find that Sparky ranks a completely respectable T48 in football APR for 2023, ahead of Purdue, UCLA, and plenty of other quote-unquote Good Schools! Instead, I’m going to make an “lol, ASU football players bad” joke - they’re consistently picked in the bottom two of the conference this year, and are desperately banking on the idea that their defense, special teams, and ability to not politely hand the ball to the other team multiple times per game can’t get any worse than they were last year. A tough non-con and a still-figuring-it-out coaching staff point me to an under in 2024, after K Dilly the Boy Wonder burnt me on last season’s o4.5 wins bet in his head coaching debut.

Arkansas o4.5 (-145)

Siri, play "Without Me” by Eminem! Sam Pittman’s offensive coordinator and motorcycle enthusiast Bobby Petrino returns to Arkansas after a Family Circus-esque path through Western Kentucky, Louisville (for a second time), Missouri State, and Texas A&M back to the Razorbacks, where he served as head coach from 2008-2011. If Pittman and Petrino can shake off the KJ Jefferson departure with solid play from Boise State transfer Taylen Green (who gives off a very "Jayden Daniels” vibe with his quick-twitch agility, elite top speed, and Gen-Z first name), I can see them sneaking up on one or two of the eight teams to whom they find themselves preseason underdogs. They bring back the majority of their starters from a defense that’s trending upwards, and should be able to improve in the trenches thanks to a hog pen’s worth of transfers. If they can flip one-score game luck back in their favor after posting a -4 in Net Close Losses last year, we should only need one conference win to sneak over the bar.

Air Force o6.5 (-154), Army o5.5 (-164), Navy o5.5 (+133)

We may be getting ahead of ourselves here by stepping on the toes of the Red White And Blue Support The Troops Pick Of The Week, but I see plenty of value when looking at the service academy RSWs this season. Air Force is featured as one of Phil Steele’s “Surprise Teams” for 2024, which seems like a bit of a compli-sult considering they posted a 9-4 record in 2023 and are still run by Squadron Leader Troy Calhoun, entering his 18th year at the helm. Army and Navy, on the other hand, both fit neatly into one of my favorite preseason betting philosophies: teams with 5.5 as their RSW tend to be so strongly bowl-eligibility-motivated that they end up scraping to the over one way or another. Even in a world where Army has a slightly disappointing year, firing the cannons on all three of these overs all but guarantees you’ll have a rooting interest in the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy battle until and through the Army-Navy game on December 14th.

BYU u4.5 (-130)

The 2023 season was a tumultuous one for the Cougars of Provo, as the Square Attack narrowly missed out on our preseason o5.5 RSW bet thanks to the loss of both their QB and their #1 tackler midseason after racing out to a 5-2 record through seven games. We won’t be fooled again: someone in this conference has to lose games to the big dogs, and unfortunately, you can only rely on “this unit should be better this season” for one or two position groups before departures to the NFL, the transfer portal, and/or missionary work catch up to you. The signs seem to be pointing towards the Cougs needing at least another year to pile up the depth of talent required to compete at a Power 4 level, and that’s before factoring in any alcohol-related honor code violations that might cost one of these incoming transfers from more socially active climes some playing time.

Clemson u9 (+100)

Some bettors carefully calculate win probabilities and aggregate them over a fancy, external-factor-adjusted model to determine how a team is going to fare when it comes to preseason RSW bets. I will take this opportunity to remind you that I do not gamble to make money, I gamble to have fun, and if you’re relying on this newsletter for actual financial advice, you need to close your browser or email app and throw your device into the deepest body of water within driving distance. With that said, fading Dabo Swinney is fun, so we’re fading Dabo Swinney this year. The Tigers face four of the ACC’s top six teams, along with Georgia in the season opener (more on this later), and Brain Genius Dabo continues to refuse to use the transfer portal to fill any holes or supplement any depth, which at this point in the evolution of college football is akin to poking yourself in the eye before going target shooting. Speaking of, the team will at least have the services of star DT DeMonte Capehart after his gun charges were dropped in February, but the vibes are off in Clemson and it’s only a matter of time before the various portal warriors of the ACC and beyond take advantage of that fact.

Coastal Carolina o6.5 (+123)

The Square Attack simply cannot quit this team. No college football season preview is complete without a quick peek out south and east to the Fun Belt, where Coastal is coming off a solid eight-win season despite the departure of Jamey Chadwell, who will make another appearance a few picks down. A solid offensive line should ease the burden of losing a hefty chunk of passing and receiving production, and the defensive secondary is poised to make a significant impact thanks to a veteran group of returning corners and safeties. The Beach Chickens can comfortably make a bowl game, especially if they can finally get over the hump and beat a JMU team that has stomped them in consecutive years, or if they scrape together a winning run across several of the many 50/50 games on their schedule.

Colorado u5.5 (-105)

Quick, identify which of the following headlines, each of which would serve as an uncomfortably large red flag even if it were affixed to the stern of the Chinese Olympic delegation’s opening ceremonies parade boat, is fake:

Trick question: they’re all real! It remains to be seen whether a 1-8 finish to the year will dampen the enthusiasm of the various celebrities sighted at Colorado games and practices over the last year, but even a new OL coach and yet another huge batch of incoming transfers likely won’t be enough to propel this team to bowl eligibility.

Georgia o10.5 (-140)

This isn’t the most fun bet on the board, but in a long (read as: three-year) college football gambling career, I’ve found that when very high or very low RSW totals are juiced even higher or lower, respectively, sometimes you have to bite the bullet and pay the increased vig to give yourself the best shot at winning. Ask yourself, do you think there’s a higher probability that Georgia goes 12-0 or 9-3 this year? It would probably take multiple injuries (or, perhaps more likely considering the test population in question, multiple drunk driving arrests) at impact positions to put Georgia in a position to falter more than twice this season. Yes, they face a more difficult schedule with Ole Miss, Alabama, and Texas all on the road, but they return 14 starters from a team that was more concerned with processing their opponents into food-grade powder than competing with them in the 2023 regular season. I’ve also backed myself into a bit of a corner by recommending the correlated Alabama, Clemson, and (spoiler alert) Ole Miss unders, so if they blow it to one of those teams, I’m probably out both bets. A reminder, though: fading Kirby is not a profitable strategy as of late.

Illinois o5.5 (+103)

[I steamroll my way to the stage during Illinois head coach Bret Bielema’s press conference at Big Ten Media Day, knocking over several esteemed college football journalists in the process]

[I commandeer the microphone]

“MORE LIKE BRET BOWL-EMA, AMIRITE?”

[I make finger guns at Bret Bielema]

[Bret Bielema punches my head clean off my shoulders]

Iowa u7.5 (+175)

This is the first in a series of half-unit fliers that are A) more fun that betting a side with hilarious amounts of juice and B) involve outcomes that would be extremely hilarious if they hit. We here at the Square Attack got our kicks out of tracking the FERENTZHEIT 300 index last year, but failson OC Brian Ferentz didn’t even make it to Halloween before the program decided it’d had enough of what The Athletic’s Alex Kirshner once called “Sports’ Most Absurd Nepotism Charade”. Combine that story with the 2023’s entry for “most paint-drying 10-2 season in college football history” at a blistering 15.4 (!!!) PPG, plus the reports coming out of camp that Michigan transfer QB Cade McNamara might be incapable of passing his way out of a bag of popcorn, and the side-splitting unintentional comedy that would come from Iowa having a 4-6 win season from hell after canning Kirk’s nepo baby might put me in the hospital next to Kinnick Stadium.

[Edited to add at press time: Kirk Ferentz and assistant Jon Budmayr will be suspended one game for a violation related to the recruitment Cade McNamara, which is akin to getting 60 days in jail for using Limewire to download Poodle Hat.]

Liberty o10.5 (-144)

Liberty may have been playing a 2023 slate that ranked effectively DFL in strength of schedule, but the thing about football players is that they don’t decide who lines up on the other side of the ball, and their job is to win regardless of who the suits pick to accept their blowout checks. The Flames flambéed every single one of their 2023 regular season opponents, who were….what’s the opposite of a murderer’s row? A petty thief’s row? A parking violator’s row? Anyways, they went 13-0 until 2023 Heisman Winner Bo Nix (don’t fact check that) beat the brakes off them in the Fiesta Bowl, 45-6. But Oregon isn’t on the regular season schedule in 2024, and neither is anyone else who would keep Liberty from ranking DFL yet again in Steele’s preseason SoS metric. They get the dynamic 1-2-3 punch of QB Kaidon Salter Jr., RB Quinton Cooley Sr., and HC Jamey Chadwell back and should expect to literally and figuratively baptize pretty much everyone of their CUSA opponents.

LSU o9.5 (+153)

Another unit-at-max nibble here with the Bayou Bengals, who were simply God-awful on defense last year and survived primarily thanks to 2023 Heisman Runner-Up Jayden Daniels (again, please do not fact check that) and his Herculean efforts. Daniels might be off to NFL purgatory as the QB of the Washington Administrative Commonwealth of Football-Participating Athletes, but LSU’s losses on offense have a chance to be significantly offset by improvements to talent and replacements to staff on the other side of the ball. They still have an OL that ranks in the top 5ish preseason, and they’re currently favored (which is a phrase you use to hedge against the fact that they might be huge underdogs by the time November 9th rolls around) to beat Alabama at home, which correlates neatly with our Bama under mentioned above. So, join the Square Attack aboard the Nuss Bus, and try to ensure that your postgame celebrations after LSU wins its 10th game don’t result in you being permanently 86’d from visiting Mike the Tiger.

Memphis u8.5 (+140)

Yep, it’s another plus-money number, and we’re adding it as the tiny portion of cole slaw on an otherwise protein-dominant BBQ plate of preseason bets. Memphis is an extremely top-heavy team that has found plenty of success in the American Athletic Conference, appearing in a plurality of its title games, but their schedule includes dangerous games on the road at UTSA (consensus conference favorites), Tulane (excellent incoming transfer class), and USF (#9 in the country in returning experience). It shapes up to be the most intense American war since A24 dropped the least read-the-room movie of all time, and if Memphis QB Seth Henigan, who has thrown almost every pass for the team since 2021, goes down with an injury, even the supernatural power of the Bass Pro Shops pyramid may not be enough to keep this team in the hunt.

Miami u9.5 (-153)

A top-three Dril tweet of all time goes to none other than LifeWallet CEO, Miami booster, and prolific cash immolator John Ruiz, whose company is straight up not having a good time right now, according to this quote from a very professionally-written and yet unintentionally hilarious ESPN article:

In the SEC filing, Ruiz said that LifeWallet, a large-scale medical claims company, had made $7.7 million in revenue last year and suffered a net loss of $211 million. It's unclear whether the company's financial troubles will impact its NIL deals with current athletes.

I’ll tell you this for free: it’s pretty clear that the company’s financial troubles (e.g., losing an average of $1.73M per day for an entire year) will impact its NIL deals with future athletes. After shelling out $8M to fire Manny Diaz, $9M to buy out Mario Cristobal, and another $8M to pay Mario Cristobal to literally fumble his way through clock management, Miami better hope that their incoming class of transfer talent and a relative easy schedule are enough to get them back on track. Do you want to be holding an o9.5 ticket when the ‘Canes are sitting on nine wins, needing an 85 yard drive with two minutes left to beat Syracuse on the road in their season finale while Mario Cristobal is looking at his playsheet like it’s written in hieroglyphics? No. No, you do not.

Minnesota o5.5 (-115)

We’re going back to the well with the SABER-metrics (Square Attack Bowl Eligibility Respect), siding with PJ Fleck and his boat-rowing, power-lifting, cult-leading style to try and carve out six wins from a bell-curve schedule with a couple of sure Ws, a couple of sure Ls, and a host of toss-ups in the middle. The Golden Gophers bring in Walter Payton Award finalist Max Brosmer at QB, which should serve as a significant upgrade over Althan Kaliakmanis (aka “the Greek Gunslinger”), who Trojan-horsed his was up out of Minny and into the transfer portal. The Gophers do face an fairly difficult first half of their conference schedule, including back to back contests on the road at Michigan and then at home against USC (more on them later). But, assuming they might be able to hang with Wisconsin in the season finale and bring home Paul Bunyan’s Axe, I can see them depositing their first three wins into their Fleck Bank (including the opener against North Carolina, more on them right now) and tunneling their way to a bowl game.

North Carolina u7.5 (-105)

Speaking of season openers, UNC travels up north to Minnesota on August 29th for the only Thursday Night Football that Jeff Bezos has yet to get his grubby hands on. Mack Brown, everyone’s favorite CFB septuagenarian now that Nick Saban is out of the picture, will seek to replicate a convincing win over the Gophers last season, but without Drake Maye and with only 10 career returning OL starts aside from C Willie Lampkin, that should prove difficult. The Tarheels are a bit of a ball-knower darling this season, with Steele and others projecting them as an ACC sleeper pick, but I find it more likely that Grandpa Mack might sleepwalk his way to a disappointing season before calling it quits to go golf at The Villages and tell stories about his good ol’ days at Texas until Florida sinks into the ocean, or until the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first.

[Ed. Note: yes, I’m aware that you’re perfectly capable of betting on Minnesota to beat North Carolina instead of locking in two individual hundred-day-long bets for the entire season. Once again, if you’re paying attention to that sort of thing, you’re in the wrong place.]

Ohio State u10.5 (+154)

It’s another half-unit under at significant plus money, and while the Square Attack makes no pretenses about its out-of-control University of Oregon homerism, it’s the question marks surrounding QB Will Howard that make this worth exploring. The Ducks aren’t the only team in this conference with an NIL budget that may as well be unlimited, but if you believe that Oregon can get it done in Eugene against the Buckeyes, all it takes is one more stumble for this to cash. Those with o10.5 tickets at -184 juice are going to have to hang on tight while tOSU matches up with two of the other top four teams in the Big Ten on the road: at Penn State, and at home against a Michigan team that has had Ohio State’s social security, driver’s license, and passport numbers in the last three meetings. This is an extremely talented team at just about every other position, but if Howard leans more Kyle McCord than Bo Nix, it’s worth the possibility of profiting if/when Michigan sneaks up on the Buckeyes yet again and Ryan Day gets excommunicated to the furthest reaches of Siberia.

Oklahoma State o8.5 (+113)

Listen, I’m not sure how we got two drunk-driving-related entries on this list either, but this tweet is simply too similar to HC Mike Gundy’s justification for refusing to publicly discipline RB Ollie Gordon for a DUI arrest because he thought, quote, “I’ve probably done that one thousand times in my life and it was just fine so I got lucky.” I’m no PR expert, but someone like Gundy should know better than to say something so asinine that it ends up the subject of a public statement from MADD. [Ed. note: The Square Attack and its legal counsel would like to remind you that driving drunk is a very bad idea.] Media relations nightmares aside, assuming Gundy and Gordon can get back to making better decisions on the field than they have been off it, they have a shot to contend for the Big 12 title again. They catch Utah at home and are likely to be a favorite in double-digit games this year, thanks to their #1 ranking in returning experience. And if they do, be sure to zoom in on your 4K TV to make a donation to the Cowboys’ general NIL fund using the QR code printed on their helmets.

Ole Miss u9.5 (+100)

That’s right, we’re fading the Lane Train! The Square Attack finds it hard to believe that Coach Kiffin can Tik Tok dance his way to 10 wins again in a season where the pressure, expectations, and opportunities to misstep are as voluminous as they’ve ever been for the Rebs. They scraped out a +4 in Net Close Wins and racked up a +11 turnover margin in 2023, indicating that there may be regression on the horizon against a slate where they face South Carolina and LSU (both on the road, both coming off a bye), Georgia at home, and Florida in the Swamp. It’s not out of the question that they find themselves teetering on nine wins entering Egg Bowl week, and if you’re automatically pencilling that game in as a win, you’re ignoring a consistent trend of inconsistency in the Ole Miss v Miss St rivalry. Think of this team as “Colorado, but good”, relying heavily on a Brinks trunk worth of NIL and transfer portal spending, but the look on Lane’s face when Jaxson Dart yeets an option pitch directly to a blitzing DB for six the other way in crunch time late in the season make this bet worth pouring yourself a frosty glass of haterade.

Purdue u4.5 (-163)

It was great to hear from QB Hudson Card on the Cover 3 podcast earlier in the offseason, but he may prefer to keep microphones out of his face and his mouthpiece firmly in his jaw while he runs through the buzzsaw that is the #5 most difficult schedule in the county. Even their toss-up games are mostly on the road, they will likely be underdogs in eight or nine contests this season, and their special teams have ranked in the triple digits in each of the last five years. The giants of the Big Ten would do well to keep their eye on the ball against this marginally-improved Boilermakers team, who hold the record for most wins over Top 2 AP teams in history. Also, there’s your trivia fact to repeat at every tailgate and watch party this season - you’re welcome. Unless Purdue can bank four or five wins before November, however, it is well within the realm of possibility that they finish the season 0-5 and extinguish any optimism that the enginerds in West Lafayette have for bowl eligibility.

SMU o8.5 (-115)

The Square Attack generally supports all things SMU, even correctly identifying them as AAC conference champions last season with a +260 futures bet that helped stem the bleeding from the other insane conference odds longshots with which we sprayed the board. We find ourselves staring at an ontological truth, which is that to win the AAC in 2023, SMU had to beat a LOT of very bad teams. That said, the Cocaine Ponies aren’t exactly jumping to the SEC West (RIP), and their new membership to the ACC will only raise the floor of the level of competition they’re facing to [checks notes] #76 in the country in strength of schedule, as they get Florida State at home and avoid Clemson entirely. Expectations are high in Dallas, but if the defense and special teams can hold their water while an electric group of offensive skill players put on a show, there will be no need for a fire sale at the SMU corral.

Temple u2.5 (-143)

Three FBS teams share the lowest RSW total I can find, and Temple wins the tiebreaker (if that’s the term you’d like to use) by virtue of it being juiced furthest towards the under. HC Stan Drayton is doing his damnedest to drag the Owls back to at least “respectable”, if not “competitive”, but the nest is just too empty this season - only five starters from 2023 are back on each side of the ball, sticking them at #129 in returning experience. Find me three wins on Temple’s schedule and I’ll find you three games where you’re going to be holding on for dear life to any meager lead while a defense that surrendered 442 (!!!) YPG last year lets ballcarriers gallivant their way through open space. It takes a lot for the Square Attack to suggest against even the most degenerate of college football bets, but if you’re considering laying big action on the 2024 Temple Owls, tell yourself “no”.

[Ed. Note: In the interest of full disclosure, New Mexico’s u2.5 RSW total has actually crept up to -150 at press time, making it the grossest bet on the board. But, we actually like Bronco Mendenhall, so we’re leaving this Temple section as-is as the lowest under to consider.]

Texas o10.5 (+215)

The final of our half-unit, plus-money fliers arrives in Austin from Los Angeles rocking a newly-purchased Stetson and a pair of too-clean cowboy boots. If you’re getting the sense that I like taking the overs on name-brand teams with brash reputations and road-grading offensive lines, you would be correct. While everyone is rushing to throw dirt on the Longhorns due to a season-ending injury to RB CJ Baxter, all I see is a top-5 OL, an excellent coach, and the deepest quarterback room in terms of talent in the country (for SEO purposes, this room includes TEXAS STARTING QUARTERBACK ARCH MANNING). If you want to fade this team, go find an alt line under and hope the wheels completely fall off, but I like the fact that they miss Ole Miss, LSU, and Mizzou. If they can go 2-1 against Michigan, Oklahoma, and Georgia, they could be facing the new-look Aggies in a renewed Lone Star Showdown rivalry with A&M with a chance to get to 11 wins on the season.

Texas A&M u8.5 (-115)

Do I think that Mike Elko is a significant improvement on Jimbo Fisher and his $75M buyout? Yes, I do. Do I think that Mike Elko is capable of squeezing two additional wins out of a Texas A&M squad that returns a very talented list of starters? Yes, I do. Do I think that they should be favored by 2.5 or so vs Notre Dame at home in their season opener? Yes, I do. Do I think that they should be favored, as they currently are, against Texas at home to end the season? No, I do not. If you’re the type of bettor that likes how teams look on paper, this is a simple choice for you - they’re chock full of great athletes, they avoid Georgia/Bama/Ole Miss, and they bring back a boatload of production on both sides of the ball. But, if you’ll forgive the Football Guy cliche: these games ain’t played on paper, and the idea that a new head coach could put up nine wins in his debut season in the SEC is tough for me to lean into.

UCLA u5 (-163)

We turn our attention to the first Big Ten team that I can recall putting back-to-back Friday games on their schedule: the UCLA Bruins, who get their weekend started early at home against Iowa on Nov. 9th and on the road at UW on Nov. 16th. If I was an AD and knew that my team might be facing a 68-spot jump in strength of schedule ranking (from #70 in 2023 to #2 in 2024), not to mention 26,762 total miles of air travel on the season, I might not be trifling with my days of the week as much. QB Ethan Garbers is still here, somehow, having seen Dorian Thompson-Robinson go the NFL and Dante Moore retreat back to Oregon in his time since transferring in from UW in 2021. Lots has been made of Chip Kelly leaving a P4 HC job to take a P4 OC job in the same conference, and if you’re looking for something to bolster your confidence in this Bruins squad, you’re probably going to want to skip the intro to new HC Deshaun Foster’s Big Ten Media Day presser.

USC o7.5 (-130)

Across town from Pasadena to DTLA we go, taking stock in a USC team that was a favorite punching bag for the Square Attack last season, not because it was mean, but because it was fun (even if it was also sometimes mean). The theory here is similar to the LSU pick above: they lose a tremendously talented QB to the NFL, but should be able to plug enough of the cannonball-sized holes in its defensive boat to at least match last year’s win total. This is a post-hype sleeper pick for a Trojans squad that just named the better-than-competent Miller Moss as the starter at QB, slots in a solid group of WRs to replace production from last year, and should be able to use special teams to flip a game here or there. USC’s School of Dramatic Arts might be a top-5 school for clown education according to Clowns Without Borders, but it might be time to start taking Lincoln Riley a whole lot more seriously as the Trojans make their Big Ten debut.

Wyoming o6.5 (-110)

We arrive at the last of our preseason RSW bets in idyllic Laramie, and as we cast our gaze across the Wyoming Basin Shrub steppe, we see the opportunity for not only bowl eligibility, but also conference title contention for the Pokes of the Mountain West. QB Evan Svoboda and FS Wyett Ekeler both made The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman’s annual “Freaks List”, and they boast a stout defensive line that should be among the top position groups in the MWC. Their favorable schedule excludes not-actually-a-state-but-who’s-counting in always-frisky Fresno and delivers also-not-a-state Boise to War Memorial Stadium late in the season when it might get snowy/windy, which should balance out any regression implied by a +3 in Net Close Wins and a +11 in turnovers from 2023. The last non-covid season that Wyoming failed to reach seven wins was 2018 (6-6), and you have to go all the way back to 2015 to find the last time they missed a bowl. If Svoboda can leap to metaphorical heights similar to the literal heights he posted with his 40-inch vertical in team workouts, it’s not hard to imagine that the most crypto-friendly state in America may be home to a Cowboys team whose future points up and to the right.

WEEK ZERO PICKS

Congratulations, you made it to the bottom of this >6,000 word preview! As compensation for this achievement, I bestow upon you a thimbleful of water in which to wet your beak during college football’s abbreviated preseason that actually counts in the record books because “reasons”. And, as always when talking about college football, those “reasons” are usually “money”. Week zero, explained:

To the picks!

Florida St at GA Tech: Haynes King u196.5 passing yards. Our first #PRECIPWATCH of the season calls for sun in Dublin, but look at that wind:
Montana St at New Mexico: Lobos +11. New HC Bronco Mendenhall has a chance to dismiss the haters who have pushed this line against a very solid Montana State team up into the double digits.
SMU at Nevada: o56. I don’t care what it looks like, I just want to see some points. Preston Stone should be able to sling it all over the yard, and I don’t hate his rushing yardage over in this one either.
Delaware St at Hawaii: Delaware St 2H TT u3.5. Get on a 10.5 hour flight that’s been delayed multiple days. Then play a half of football against a vastly superior opponent. Do you feel confident in your ability to score more than a field goal in the second half of that game?

NEWSLETTER BUSINESS

Ok, but seriously, now you’re at the bottom of this >6,000 word preview. Thank you again for reading - I’d love to grow the Square Attack community, if for no other reason than to justify the amount of time I spend on it along with my fellow members of the Square Attack Editorial Board. So, would you mind sharing it with those in your life that love college football as much as we do?

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