College Football Betting – Buffalo Bulls vs. Ball State Cardinals

The 2008-09 MAC champion will be crowned on Friday night in the Motor City when the sports betting affair. Head coach Brady Hoke’s Cardinals made minced meat out of the Bulls the L/2 times they faced them winning 55-25 as 3.5-point road favorites in 2006, and by a 49-14 final tally as 14-point home favorites last season. Ball State has won and covered all four of these programs previous four meetings.

Oddsmakers expect the Cardinals to cruise to another comfy win against their MAC East counterparts since they installed Ball State as lofty 14-point neutral site favorites on the college football betting line. The number didn’t seem to be enough as the betting public has already raised the Cardinals to 15-point favorites at the time of this writing. The game ‘total’ opened up at 59.5, but has since been bet up to where it currently sits at 61.

Buffalo played in a meaningless back and forth CFB betting affair against Kent State last week. Head coach Turner Gill would have liked to see his team pull out the SU victory to improve their home mark to 5-1 on the year, but the Golden Flashes proved to be too resilient and came away with the 24-21 SU road win and cover as 9.5-point underdogs. After winning in back-to-back overtime games, luck finally caught up to the Bulls who dropped their first game since October 11th to halt their winning streak at five.

QB Drew Willy put forth a sensational season running the Bulls attack in ’08. He’s thrown for close to 3000 yards on the year and completed nearly 65% of his passes; he enters tonight’s MAC championship game with a solid TD/INT ratio of 22:5. RB James Starks made his life a lot easier since opposing stop units had to account for both the pass and the run. Coming into tonight’s game, Starks has rushed for 1226 yards with a 5.1 YPC average and found the endzone 14 times.

These two formed quite the dynamic duo that propelled the Bulls to their best season ever since the football program’s inception in the late 90’s.

What else can you say about the Ball State Cardinals that hasn’t already been said? HC Hoke’s kids have put forth one of the best MAC seasons a teams ever churned out since the “Big Ben” days over in Oxford. A win here would allow them to secure an undefeated mark before playing in its bowl game in a couple of weeks.

Junior QB Nate Davis is the glue that holds this team together, but the Cardinals boast talent in all phases of the game on both sides of the ball. That said; Davis has put forth a tremendous season by completing 67% of his passes and throwing for a shade under 3100 yards with a TD/INT ratio of 24:7. He also had a major contributor to his success in the backfield that came in the little form of RB MiQuale Lewis who rushed for 1500+ yards on the year to go along with 20 TDs. These two comprise an offensive unit that scored an average of 37 PPG and gained close to 500 combined yards per game this season. Whoa Nelly!

These two clubs did a ton of damage in Vegas this year as they combined to beat the closing NCAAF pointspread in 16 of their 22 lined games. It’s only fitting that the two best teams in the MAC both SU and ATS get to square off in the MAC Championship Game.