College Football Opening Lines, Week 11 CFB Betting Odds and Spreads

College football lines are out for Week 11, and it’s great to have all the conferences back in action. The PAC 12 finally returned this past weekend, giving us a preliminary sense of where things stand in that conference after we headed in blind last week.

You can often get the most value early in the week by exploiting opening lines before they get adjusted too much by sharp action, and today we’ll be looking at the lines for all the biggest games this weekend. As always you can check out our ‘NCAAF picks‘ tab for free breakdowns on all the biggest games, which are usually posted by Wednesday.

College Football Week 10 opening lines

#9 Miami @ Virginia Tech (-2.5)

#12 Georgia (-13.5) @ Missouri

#3 Ohio State (-26) @ Maryland

#2 Notre Dame (-13.5) @ Boston College

#20 USC (-14) @ Arizona

#1 Alabama (-28) @ LSU

#19 SMU @ Tulsa (-2.5)

Arkansas @ #6 Florida (-17)

As you can see, we don’t have an abundance of marquee matchups this week. Unfortunately we’re still waiting on lines for a couple of this weekend’s bigger games, like Wisconsin @ Michigan and Texas A&M @ Tennessee. Oddsmakers aren’t in quite the bind they were last week when they had to hang lines on a bunch of unknown PAC 12 teams, but there were still some tough decisions to make.

Oh how the might have fallen. Just one year after winning a title, LSU finds themselves a four-touchdown underdog to Alabama, which is a wild sight to see. It’s also interesting to see Miami be an underdog to Virginia Tech despite being ranked just outside the top ten. Virginia Tech is coming off a loss to Liberty, so the fact that they’re still favored here tells you a lot about how oddsmakers feel about this Miami team.

Other teams that oddsmakers seem to think are overrated include SMU. Despite being 7-1 and ranked 19th, oddsmakers have them as a slight underdog against Tulsa. Maryland just crushed Penn State and they’re now coming off back to back upset wins but oddsmakers aren’t giving them too much credit yet, as they’re massive underdogs to the Buckeyes.

Do I like any of the opening lines?

A couple of these are intriguing to me. I lean toward Virginia Tech early in the week, and when a team like this is a favorite over a team so highly ranked, there’s usually a pretty good reason why. The Hokies only lost to Liberty in the final seconds on an improbable walk-off field goal, and I think that had more to do with undefeated Liberty being legitimately good than anything else. Miami has mostly been beating up on weaker teams by relatively narrow margins, and I think they come crashing down to earth here.

I’ve enjoyed Arkansas’ success so far this season, but I think now is the time to fade them. Their head coach Sam Pittman, the mind behind this sudden turnaround, just caught COVID-19, and I think that will throw the program out of sync. They aren’t the type of established unit that can weather that kind of storm. Florida has all the momentum in the world following their win over Georgia, and the offense is firing on all cylinders. I don’t think this one is going to be close.

When do the lines open?

Most legal online sportsbooks post their lines on Saturday night after the week’s games or on Sunday morning, with limits increasing throughout the week as it gets closer to kick off.

Who sets the college football opening lines?

Oddsmakers launch their opening lines as an educated guess at where they think the line will attract action on both sides. Early line movements usually indicate sharp action. Even though limits are small, sharps are the first ones thinking about opening lines. The lines will continue to move as the week goes on, limits increase, and more information becomes available such as injury reports and weather forecasts.

At Pickswise we offer free expert College Football Picks and Predictions for all games in the Power Five conferences and the top 25 teams outside of Power five, including our College Football Parlay picks each week.

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