Florida vs FAU Preview
The Florida Gators will kick off their 2021 college football season by hosting an in-state rival from Boca Raton on September 4. Florida has opened as a 25-point home favorite over FAU. Sportsmemo handicapper John Ryan offers his thoughts on this Sunshine State matchup.
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Battle in the Sunshine State
There are many reasons I like Florida Atlantic in this matchup against SEC-power Florida. The first is that I believe the line for this game is going to decline from 24.5-points and move as low as 21.5-points over the next several weeks. The main reason for the line to decline is the fact that FAU is returning 20 starters including their QB from last season. Florida returns just ten starters with five each on offense and defense and will have a new QB under center. Teams that return 17 or more starters from the previous season have a significant advantage over any opponent during the first four weeks of the season, especially if the entire offensive line is intact.
FAU had a sputtering and largely inconsistent offense in the 2020 season and with COVID-19 dominating the season, who can say they didn’t have struggles. They return all five offensive lineman and have two very good players on that line with junior tackle BJ Entienne and senior guard Desmond Noel. Both players will be playing on Sundays. FAU has tremendous depth at running back coming into the season and I fully expect them to have one of the nation’s top ground games averaging in excess of 200 rushing yards-per-game in 2021. The Owls got help from the addition of former USF running back Johnny Ford, who gained 1,175 yards with 13 TDs last season. The chemistry of all five offensive lineman back for this season cannot be underestimated and will enjoy significant advantages against a Florida team returning just five starters.
I like the Owls over 7.5 wins in 2021. This is year two under head coach Taggert and they are in a great place to build off the Lane Kiffin era and win their third Conference USA title in the past four seasons. Taggert is 25-11-1 ATS as a road underdog and 19-6-1 in road games in the first 6 weeks of the season in his coaching career.
The Betting Angle
This betting angle has earned a 36-5-1 ATS record good for 86% winning bets over the last 30 NCAA Football seasons. The requirements are to be on a road team in the first month of the season that was a bowl team from the previous season, lost the last two games of the regular season and then lost the bowl game, and now facing an opponent that lost their last two games. Take the Florida Atlantic Owls plus the 24.5-points.
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Meet the Capper: John Ryan
John Ryan founded a cutting-edge sports technology company more than 25 years ago. John has utilized many of the machine learning tools that have applications in other industries to successfully build simulation models, neural networks, and many types of algorithms that have earned strong predictive results. To identify a betting opportunity the fundamental research must support the mathematical projections. After all, he has been kicking around in this sports data space and the life sciences space for 25 years. John has a proven track record of success as shown in his season records and numerous Top-10 finishes in all Major Sports. He can found on Twitter too @johnRyanSports1.
WagerTalk’s Live Odds Screen
Since the conclusion of last season’s National Championship game, WagerTalk has continued to improve and enhance our Live Odds screen. Bettors can view the up-to-the-minute odds from a variety of offshore and Vegas-based sports books. Color-coded alerts will let you know when and how a line has moved. Click on the individual cells to view a line history at each sports book. Interested in knowing what a point spread was on a previous game? Use the “archive” feature to find a previous matchup. View real-time odds on nearly every point spread market: Full games, first halves, first quarters, team totals and moneylines.
College Football Offseason Previews
Join Sportsmemo’s Drew Martin and WagerTalk’s Rob Veno are breaking down the preseason college football market conference-by-conference. Join Rob and Drew as they take a look at the new coaches and quarterback transfers that are coming into each league this season. Who is a mid-pack team that might surprise some people and make a move up this year. Who is a team to fade that might struggle this year?
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