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College football betting, picks, odds: Early best bets for Week 6's biggest games, including Miami-Florida State

Last Saturday’s much-ballyhooed big slate of college football matchups came as advertised, and now it sets up …

A day of pumpkin-picking, or a stroll in an apple orchard.

Wait, what?

Yes, if we’re going to get excited about a day with anywhere from 5-10 high-leverage matchups, we have to pick our spots and admit when, in the name of keeping harmony at home, it might be a good idea to take a Saturday afternoon off. Especially, considering we’re getting another tasty bushel of matchups in Week 7.

Now, for the diehards hanging in for Week 6, last week’s heavyweight tilts have shook up the betting market as many of the big teams have made even bigger moves.

Here are some teams that helped or hurt themselves in Week 5, along with my early thoughts on Saturday’s biggest games.

Movers

If you like uncertainty and parity, we may be headed for one of the great college football seasons of all time.

Remember when Alabama was allegedly in shambles, post-Saban, after losing in Tallahassee? Well, they just won at Georgia, two weeks after the Bulldogs won on the road at Tennessee. The Crimson Tide, who started the season 10-1 to win the national title, went to 15-1 after Week 1, and are now down to +850 at BetMGM.

We’re going to have our heads spinning with this type of exercise this season, but Alabama gets itself a nose (er, elephant’s trunk?) ahead of Georgia in the race for the College Football Playoff. Meanwhile, Oregon’s win at Penn State acts in a similar way, but unlike the Bulldogs, the Nittany Lions — still somehow +800 — don’t have a notable win yet, and only have a trip to Columbus and a matchup with Indiana left on their schedule to pad the resume.

Shakers

It wasn’t an upset, but Lane Kiffin’s football team shook things up in the rankings the same week his daughter shook up the internet. Like Indiana over Illinois last week, Ole Miss effectively swapped spots with LSU in the current hierarchy. It’s another example of how frivolous it is to rank any of the teams in the top 16 to 20 in the country, as we have 12 teams with odds of 25-1 or shorter. And that doesn’t even include Indiana (who survived Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium) or Tennessee (who survived Mississippi State’s cowbells). At 20-1, Ole Miss is up to eighth on the oddsboard. That’s the level of a potential quarterfinalist, which is quite the leap of a team that was rated 16th in THE WINDOW’s estimated market ratings.

It’s not usually how we define the category of “shake ups,” but teams that recently shook things up by firing their head coach, went 3-0 against the spread in their subsequent game against a Power-4 opponent: UCLA backdoored the spread at Northwestern, Oklahoma State hung around just long enough with Baylor and Virginia Tech won at North Carolina State as 10.5-point underdogs.

Could this be due to some inspiration or the team “getting the message”? Possibly, or it could be a function of the perception of each team being so bad that an inflated spread set the requirement to cover relatively low.

Betting the big games for Week 6

No. 16 Vanderbilt at No. 10 Alabama (-10.5, 56.5)

What a difference a year makes.

On Oct. 5, 2024, Vanderbilt beat Alabama as 24.5-point home underdogs. Almost exactly a year later, and now the Tide are “just” 10.5-point favorites in Tuscaloosa. Once adjusted for home-field advantage, that’s a three-touchdown adjustment, entirely based on the improved perception of Vandy.

If you look at Alabama, fresh off their win in Athens, as a team rated 90/100 — the level of a national title contender, Vanderbilt would need to come into this game with a rating of 80/100 to justify a 10.5-point spread.

Maybe that’s where Clark Lea has built the Commodores to already, but even after a season where they beat Alabama, and won at Auburn (plus close losses to Missouri, Texas, and LSU), the betting market established this year’s Vandy as a 5.5-win team, with juice to the under, and a lookahead line in this matchup of Alabama -22.5.

Admittedly, Vanderbilt has the capability and desire to put it on you. Lea has had no qualms with running up the score on Virginia Tech (two weeks before they fired their head coach), Georgia State, and Utah State. However, when tracking the Commodores’ market rating, the big boost has come after winning at South Carolina, 31-7.

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The yards gained were 328-323 for South Carolina, but Vandy turned the Gamecocks over six times (two fumbles, two interceptions, two on downs), plus a missed field goal, in a game where LaNorris Sellers was knocked out of the game in the second quarter with the score 14-7. That game-script would work out nicely against Alabama, but it’s not likely to be replicable.

Getting 10 points, plus the hook, looks inviting for one of the best underdogs in the country of the last two seasons, but it’s a number that actually suggests value on an Alabama team that should be more prepared to take the ‘Dores seriously after last year’s embarrassing defeat.

Pick: Alabama -10.5

No. 24 Virginia at Louisville (-7.5, 62.5)

Louisville got down 17-0 at Pittsburgh and it looked like a classic situation where the home underdog gets the win over a mid-tier team playing its first road game of the season. Then Pitt started turning over the ball repeatedly, and in such horrific fashion, that quarterback Eli Holstein was benched.

Louisville’s rating has seemed to hold firm and the Cardinals are still on the outside of the voter rankings, but the team looking to apply for “mover” status is Virginia.

The Cavaliers were full value for an overtime win over Florida State on Friday night, and they’re the ones who have burst into the AP rankings because of it. You could see Virginia’s ability to shock the Seminoles coming down the tracks, as the Hoos’ offense has been excellent this season with Chandler Morris at the helm.

They “only” had 440 total yards against FSU, winning despite three interceptions from Morris, but we should be in for another track meet in a Virginia game, where the last team to have the ball wins.

Pick: Virginia +7.5

No. 3 Miami (-4.5, 54.5) at No. 18 Florida State

After Georgia’s failure to block up a fourth-and-1, or haul in a wide-open deep ball, we’ve fallen to 2-2 in our summer look at the “Game of the Year” lines. For Week 6, we grabbed Florida at +7.5 for Saturday’s most high-profile matchup.

The ‘Noles losing last week takes a little luster off a game that has those of a certain age harkening back to the simpler times of the early 90’s, but it doesn’t make FSU any less likely to notch another win at home.

The Hurricanes have managed their schedule nicely with a trio of good home wins over Notre Dame, South Florida and Florida, but with October comes their first road game.

The Gators were able to battle the Hurricanes in the trenches to stay within a touchdown into the fourth quarter, but Florida’s poor offense eventually caused the defense to get worn down.

Florida State showed in its opening week win over Alabama that it can matchup with anyone on the line of scrimmage, and with dual-threat quarterback Thomas Castellanos, the Seminoles are far more capable of offensive explosion than the Gators, or even Notre Dame – given it was C.J. Carr’s first career start, on the road.

Pick: Florida State +4.5

You can find more on college football’s biggest games and best bets each week from Yahoo Sports betting contributor, Matt Russell, at THE WINDOW.

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