College Football Picks Week 5 2024

Last week was once again pretty tough. Toledo lost on a very strange call- they ran back a fumble for a TD for what appeared to be a game winning TD, but the play was blown dead for unclear reasons. Georgia Tech lost by 12 as a 10.5 point dog in a game where they had two turnovers deep in Louisville territory and had a blocked field goal returned for a TD. The good news is that I had two picks win in blowouts as South Alabama and Clemson dominated.

Overall I still feel decent about the process- I’m generating a ton of closing line value as almost all of my picks are moving in my direction over the course of the week. I’ve also had a bunch of teams that I like look really good in the games after I bet on them- for example, I bet on Vanderbilt in week 3, and in week 4 they nearly won outright at Missouri as a 20 point dog. Frustrating stuff, but I’ll continue to follow the same process and hope for better results.

Preseason Futures: +1.82 units

Week 1: -0.36 units

Week 2: -0.33 units

Week 3: -5.18 units
Week 4: -4.27 units

Total: -8.32 units

Northern Illinois @ NC State (Saturday, 11 AM Central)

Northern Illinois is one of the better teams in the MAC, as we saw when they beat Notre Dame a few weeks ago. They played a clunker against Buffalo last week but their upside is clear. NC State, meanwhile, is a bottom 5 power conference team in the country. 6th year senior QB Grayson McCall was supposed to start but has been injured and may not play again this season. Even if they had McCall, I’m not convinced they’d be much better, as they allowed touchdowns on Clemson’s first four drives last week. This is my favorite pick of the season so far. 

Northern Illinois +10 -110 (4 units)

Arizona @ Utah (Saturday, 9:15 PM Central)

On paper, it looks like Utah picked up one of the best wins of the season last week by knocking off a top 15 Oklahoma State team on the road. In actuality, Oklahoma State is incredibly fraudulent (unfortunately for me, they played their only good game of the season against Tulsa, which is the one time I bet against them). Loyal readers will remember that I bet this game in the preseason at Arizona +9.5 but I’m putting two more units down at +13.5. Utah is a solid, physical team but Arizona has huge explosive potential with the Fifita/McMillan combo and shouldn’t be a double digit dog here.

Arizona +13.5 -110 (2 units)

Western Kentucky @ Boston College (Saturday, 11 AM Central)

Boston College has their best team in several years. QB Thomas Castellanos is explosive both on the ground and in the passing game, and their defense forced four turnovers against Michigan State last week. Western Kentucky has a solid team and a good QB in Caden Veltkamp but I think that BC is a fringe ACC contender and they need to be bigger favorites against any non power team.
Boston College -11 -110 (2 units)

Liberty @ Appalachian State (Saturday, 2:30 PM Central)

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is going to be my third week in a row betting against App State and I’m 2-0 ATS so far- I don’t think the books have caught up to how much worse this team is than previous App State squads. They are a complete sieve on defense as we saw last week against South Alabama- and Liberty’s offense is much better than South Alabama’s. Liberty is finally getting into their groove after a sluggish opening to the season and knocked off a good ECU team by double digits last week.

Liberty -3.5 -110 (2 units)

Kentucky @ Ole Miss (Saturday, 11 AM Central)

This game is a huge contrast of styles, and it’ll be strength on strength when the Ole Miss offense takes on the Kentucky defense. We still don’t know much about Ole Miss- the best team they’ve faced this season is #90 Wake Forest. Kentucky, meanwhile, got Georgia to play the kind of game that Kentucky wanted to play (low scoring and boring) and I think that they can do that against other top teams.

Kentucky +16.5 -110 (1 unit)

Louisville @ Notre Dame (Saturday, 2:30 PM Central)

Notre Dame is fifth in my model, and would be second behind Ohio State if I tossed out the Northern Illinois game. That’s a big “if”, of course, but the Irish have been truly excellent in all three of their other games this season. Louisville has a talented roster but I am not sold on Tyler Shough as a big time QB and Notre Dame is much better than people realize.

Notre Dame -4.5 -110 (1 unit)