College football picks, predictions, odds: Penn State-West Virginia, UCLA-Hawaii among best bets in Week 1

The 2024 college football season is one of change. The Pac-12 is no more, at least not as a competitive entity. Hopefully, Oregon State and Washington State can find a way to resurrect it.

Also, we now have a 12-team College Football Playoff. All four major conference champions will get byes to the quarterfinals, so there is no longer any danger of an undefeated major conference team being left out of the CFP. The highest rated Group of Five champion gets an automatic berth as well.

One thing that hasn’t changed is my weekly Best Bets column. Each week, I will use this space to tell you what I think are a few of the best bets heading into the weekend. I will also throw in an upset of the week, which will be a team that is at least a touchdown underdog that I am picking to win outright.

I will also give you picks on other games involving potential College Football Playoff teams. Since most teams have not played yet, just about everybody is technically a CFP candidate at the moment. So for the first few weeks of the season at least, I’ll go with the current AP top 12. With the expanded playoff this season, I’ll go deeper into the rankings once we get a few games under our belts.

Games against FCS opponents are not considered, and there a lot of those this week — 59 to be exact. There are only 37 games between FBS teams. That makes the pool for this week’s picks pretty small.

Odds via SportsLine consensus

Week 1 picks

No. 8 Penn State (-8.5) at West Virginia

I like Penn State this season. I have the Nittany Lions predicted for the CFP and a sleeper pick for the Big Ten title. QB Drew Allar and running backs Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen lead what should be a dynamic offense. However, West Virginia is a team coming off a 9-4 season and…

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Author : Jerry Palm

Publish date : 2024-08-28 17:14:00

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