LAS VEGAS — With no real feature matchup this Saturday for college football, the betting is all over the place.
For example, when John Avello, sportsbook director at the Wynn, posted an early line of Navy (-13.5) at SMU, the number got pounded down to -7 in just a few hours.
"It was just a monster move," Avello said. "It was arbitrage. It happens. My numbers indicate it's supposed to be a higher number. It's one of those games you put out something and players have a very different opinion and it goes down."
The line is currently at Navy -6.5.
The same thing happened at CG Technologies for the Stanford-Oregon game.
The line opened at Oregon -1, but steady action on the Cardinal pushed it to Stanford -1.
"We took a pretty big bet on Stanford early in the week at -1," Jason Simbal of CG Technologies said. "That moved the line to -1.5 and then the public jumped back in and continued to bet Stanford as well, which pushed the line to -2. Then, interestingly, we had another sharp player take Oregon on the money line at +110 which dropped the line back to -1.5 and now nobody is jumping back in. It's been a bit of a head-scratcher but it clearly tells us the line belongs at Stanford -1.5."
William Hill has 76% of the bets going to Stanford.
The Clemson Tigers are undefeated to start the season but are 0-3 against the spread. They travel to Georgia Tech as 16-point favorites.
"An interesting move here. The line opened at Clemson -16. Then it went up to -16.5 and we had one of our pretty big players drop a big bet at that number and we expected the line to go even higher but it's come back down to -16," Simbal explained.
At William Hill, their stats say 57% of the money is coming in on Georgia Tech interestingly.
John Murray, manager at the Westgate SuperBook, said they've taken a lot of professional money all over the board.
"We have seen a handful of sharp bets from some respected groups," he noted. "They're playing Texas A+M at +27 vs. Alabama, Texas State +10.5 vs. Texas SA, Iowa +3.5 vs. Wisconsin, Georgia Tech +17 vs. Clemson and North Carolina +4 vs. Pitt."
More big bets are expected at the SuperBook as Murray said they haven't had any of their deep-pocketed punters come to the window yet.
"However we haven't seen any of our really big players yet," Murray continued. "That includes 'Duffel Bag Boy', who we haven't seen for a couple of weeks now. It's been very interesting to me to see these sharper groups playing against elite teams like Alabama and Clemson. Of course we are fine taking bets like that because we know we are going to need those sides (especially A+M) by kickoff Saturday."
Conversely, CG Technologies is getting one-way action on the Crimson Tide.
"Given all the positive stats A+M put up vs. Clemson in Week 2, we really believed some attention would be given to the Aggies vs Alabama," Simbal said. "But not at all for us. The line opened at -26 here and while we're not taking a ton of action on the game yet, it's been mostly on Alabama."
According to William Hill's numbers, 59% of the tickets with the spread are on Alabama as well.
CG has also seen some sharp money come in on the Under 50 in Michigan-Nebraska while recreational bettors can't get enough of the Georgia Bulldogs (-14.5) against Missouri.
"Every which way possible you can bet on Georgia (at -14.5) is happening here!" Simbal said. "Under the counter, over the counter, in every parlay, people are even betting the -700 money line. I kid you not, in total on the both the money line and and on the spread, we've taken all of $43 on Missouri and we're on the hook for over five figures on Georgia. This will be one of our biggest decisions of the day on Saturday. What gives us some comfort is sometimes when the sharps pile on with the public we tend to get very worried. But that's not the case here."
William Hill has Georgia also taking nearly all the money bet at a whopping 96%.
As for the Friday night games, CG Technologies is seeing big numbers on USC-Washington State.
"It can be deceiving," Simbal added. "Since USC has looked so bad — and it's really hard to bet the Trojans right now — the line was -4 early Thursday and now it's already at -4.5."
This is definitely a game to keep an eye on as USC is 0-3 ATS this season and Washington State is 3-0 versus the number.
William Hill's numbers say USC is taking a large majority of the money bet at 86%.
All information current as of Thursday evening. For real-time betting odds and market data, click here.
