NCAA Football: Week 8

Duke -4 Maryland - Duke has shows flashes of decent football, while Maryland has one Saturday outlier (win over Clemson) in a whole season of suck. The Blue Devils have lost 5 straight at home in this series, but this is just the sort of terrible Maryland team to exercise some demons against. The Terrapins have only covered 1 of their last 5 away from home and are 1-5 against the number this season. Duke has covered 3 of their last 4 as a home favorite, is also 3-1 ATS for this season, with the only loss came on a late TD at Kansas in a game where they were -2 in turnovers. Duke has quietly become a well-coached (if still sometimes outmanned) football team, and should pick up a solid win today.

Texas Tech -21 1/2 Texas A&M - Tech has finally got the offense going a bit with the new personnel and is coming off an impressive win in Lincoln. The Aggies are coming off one of the most embarassing, unprepared, and uninspired performances I've seen since, well...the Aggies bent over and took it from Oklahoma a few years back. Now they head to Lubbock, where they're hated a lot more than they do the hating, and they've failed to cover in their last 5 trips. The Red Raiders are dominating this series since the Big 12 was formed, going 11-3 ATS over that time.

Oklahoma State -9 1/2 Baylor - I'm going to need to see some life out of the post-Robert Griffin Baylor offense before I start giving them the sort of respect they're getting here. Okie State is in a slight look-ahead spot here, with Texas looming next weekend, but I think their effort has been consistent enough to not worry about that, especially against a team that doesn't have enough offense to match scores with them. Baylor has only beaten the Cowboys once in their last 13 tries and are just 1-4 ATS in the last 5 in the series. Oklahoma State has covered 7 of their last 10 away from home, including 3 out of 4 when they're the favorite.

Leans:

Alabama -14
Louisville +18
Northwestern -5
Boston College +7 1/2
Air Force +9 1/2