All hail the MAC, harbingers of every college football degenerate's midweek joy: MACtion.
Of course, now there are games on every day of the week it seems like, but nothing beats the original.
The Mid-American Conference performed admirably during bowl season last year, going 4-2. That record is a bit less impressive since they only played G5 opponents, but you have to beat who's in front of you.
However, sportsbooks are projecting 2023 to be a bit of a down year for the conference. Only two teams are projected to win seven or more games: Toledo and Ohio.
This projects more as a middling conference, with six teams projected between 5 and 6.5 wins on DraftKings.
This makes the conference tough to bet, as a bunch of similarly ranked teams can cause some chaos.
Can we profit from that? Let's find out. (Wasn't it awesome to have an intro without talking about realignment?)
Buffalo Under 6.5 Wins (-140)
Buffalo is here mainly because of its four out-of-conference games. With the exception of Fordham, we have the Bulls as seven-point underdogs or more to each team.
Digging into the rest of their schedule, assuming they go 1-3, the Bulls need to win six of their next eight to beat their win total. I'm fine with taking that bet.
As I mentioned in the introduction, the MAC has a bunch of teams that appear to be similarly ranked. I don't think Buffalo wins 75% of its conference games. DraftKings agrees with me, as its conference wins are set at 4.5. Do they see Buffalo winning two of their first four games?
I know my colleague Michael Calabrese described a lot of these games as "winnable" in he and Mike Iannello's MAC Preview, but I would look at them much more as losable.
Admittedly, this is kind of a weird under for me due to the Bulls' decent returning production numbers, especially at quarterback. They also have good coaching continuity.
However, this is one where I'm trusting our win totals.
