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PrintIn reviewing Golden Nugget’s Games of the Year point spreads, one thing immediately jumps out.
The SEC—unquestionably the toughest conference in college football at the moment—is favored in only two of its six non-conference games.
How could this happen? A couple reasons.
- One of the games involves Kentucky, so mark that with an asterisk. (The Wildcats are 11.5-point underdogs at Louisville.)
- Two of the games involve ACC foe Clemson, which the Golden Nugget is obviously very high on (2.5-point favorites over Auburn on a neutral field and 4-point favorites at home against South Carolina).
Here’s the full list of the Golden Nugget’s lines for the SEC’s non-conference games:
Alabama -12 vs. Michigan*
Clemson -2.5 vs. Auburn*
Kentucky at Louisville -11.5
Washington at LSU -21
South Carolina at Clemson -4
Florida at Florida State -7.5
Those six games got us wondering: How did we value the SEC in our point spread projections for all 798 college football games?
The SEC has 14 teams each playing four non-conference games, so that’s a total of 56 matchups. We have the SEC projected to be favored in 51 of those 56 games by an average of a whopping 23.8 points.
The only exceptions:
Florida at Florida State -7.5
Vanderbilt at Northwestern -1.5
Kentucky at Louisville -10
Clemson -3 vs. Auburn
Texas -14 at Ole Miss
How’s that for a show of superiority? Now, to be clear, the 23.8-point average is inflated by the SEC playing 16 games against FCS opponents and plenty more against teams from the Sun Belt, MAC and other weak conferences.
Still, though, SEC teams will face 14 BCS opponents, and they’ll be favored in nine of them (by an average of 4.9 points.)
