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College Football Betting Odds - Kansas State at UCLA

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Kansas State Wildcats (1-1 SU, 0-1 ATS) at UCLA Bruins (2-0 SU & ATS)

Saturday, September 19 - 10:15 PM ET

BetUS NCAA Football Betting Odds: UCLA -12.5, Total 42.5

Here are some of the NCAA college football betting trends as they relate to this matchup:

  • KSU has lost six of its last eight games SU
  • KSU has covered three of its last nine road games
  • KSU has lost nine of its last ten road games SU
  • KSU has played 18 of its last 25 road games OVER the total
  • UCLA has covered four of its last five games
  • UCLA has played five of its last six games
  • UCLA has covered five of its last six home games
  • UCLA has won 17 of its last 25 home games SU
  • UCLA has played four of its last five home games UNDER the total

What a poor schmuck Bill Snyder is. The returning coach, who spent many years previously at KSU, made a regular practice of scheduling the weakest opponents possible in order to make his team look fearsome as it was blowing out some small college or small conference patsy. Of course, the benefits from such things are somewhat mitigated with the emergence of the BCS rankings, but when he came back to take over the program after a five-year hiatus, he decided to schedule pushovers once again in the pursuit of running up gratuitous scores and get cheap attention.

Toward that end, while fellow Big 12 teams like Oklahoma were playing non-conference games against the likes of BYU, Snyder opened his season with U-Mass, an FCS team (that means it is what we used to call Division 1-AA) and Louisiana-Lafayette, an also-ran in the Sun Belt Conference. They also have Tennessee Tech, another FCS team (if that) on deck after this game with UCLA.

Well, Snyder got something he didn't expect; namely, a life-and-death struggle with U-Mass, which shut out the Wildcats in the second half and came up just short (21-17) and lost to Louisiana-Lafayette on a field goal with less than a minute left. So I guess you can say his strategy has backfired. Carson Coffman, who took over the reins at quarterback after Josh Freeman (a first-round draft pick of the Tampa Bay Bucs) departed, has been so-so (52%, 2 TD's, 2 INT's) against this lower-level competition, and there has been very little penetration on the part of the defense, which returned eight starts to the fold.

UCLA has rolled by San Diego State and barely got by Tennessee in its first two games, but at least those are legitimate opponents. They have allowed less than 500 total yards, but offense has been a problem for Rick Neuheisel's team. Freshman Kevin Price got the start in the first two games, but he got his jaw broken in the Tennessee game, and unless Neuheisel goes with another freshman, Richard Brehaut, to lead the offense, he's going to turn to Kevin Craft, last year's horrible starter who threw seven TD's and 20 interceptions last year.

Either way, we can't have all the confidence in the world that UCLA can pull away here, and we say that with the full understanding that the fact that KSU did not roll up the score -Snyder-style - against its first two foes is not a good sign. We're going to grab the points with Kansas State, the 12.5-point underdog in the BetUS NCAA football betting odds.

JAY'S PLAY: KANSAS STATE +12.5 **

(Graded on a scale of 1-4 stars)