History suggests that the BCS National Championship showdown between the Florida State Seminoles and the Auburn Tigers will be a clunker of a game. Five of the last seven games have been one-sided blowouts and there’s reason to suggest that the number one ranked Seminoles team can blow out a Tigers team that nobody believed would have made it this far at the beginning of the season.
Something tells us that the game will have a familiar script, except that the team getting the beatdown will be the one from the SEC.
The Seminoles are favored by 10 points heading into the game and while a lot of has to do with the public being heavily on Auburn’s side, the fact that the number jumped two points from the 8/8.5 line suggests that Vegas bookmakers believe this game won’t be as close as people think. How else would they tack on two more dog points on Auburn with the public being so heavy on them to begin with?
The mystique of being an SEC team (the conference has won the BCS title for seven straight years), coupled with wins against Alabama and Missouri, have the Tigers smelling like roses to all the Joes out there. Those are tricky stats and trends to ride money on, but it certainly looks like there’s not going to be any middle ground here.
Either the books win with a Seminoles blowout win, or the public gets paid handsomely with a Tigers cover, much more with a straight up win over the country’s number one-ranked team. The latter scenario could be doomsday for a lot of books, especially those who took bets on Auburn to win the national championship at the start of the season when the line was somewhere in 200/1 neighborhood.
If the spread looks like a stay-away, putting money on the over/under seems like a far safer – and more enjoyable to watch – bet to have some money on. Most books opened the line at 66 and the total has already been pushed up to around 67 to 68. With the game hours away, it’s not inconceivable to see the number hit 70, or at the least 69. At the point, the under seems like a more enticing option given the exceptionally high bets already being placed on the over, and more importantly, the fact that Florida State is also the number one-ranked defense in the country, giving up only 10.7 points a contest.
So who covers and how high will the point total be when all is said and done?
it’s easy to love the underdog and how great of a story it would be if Auburn wins the National Championship when it wasn’t even ranked at the start of the season. But Florida State has been the class of college football this season – and it’s not even close. Auburn will have its moments throughout the game, but not even to take down this Seminoles team that’s just downright dominant on both sides of the ball.
Florida State should win this one easily, somewhere in the neighborhood of 45-17, which if you’re doing the math, would also fall on the under.
