College Football Betting – (4) Bulldogs Set to Rout Vandy

Vanderbilt Commodores at (4) Mississippi State Bulldogs (-30, 52 o/u)

The No. 4-ranked Mississippi State Bulldogs (9-1, 5-1 SEC) dropped their first game of the season last weekend, 25-20 to new No.1 Alabama. But they held their own against the top-ranked Tide and managed to cover as 8.5-point road dogs. The fact that the Bulldogs stayed competitive throughout kept them in the all-important top-four of the latest College Football Playoff rankings.

“It’s kind of like starting the season back over,” Mississippi State quarterback Dak Prescott said. “We’ve got something — not necessarily to prove but to move forward from and get better.”

Added head coach Dan Mullen, “We’ve handled winning very well this season, so we’ll see how we handle this adversity at this point. It’s late in the year for that to happen, but we’ll see how our guys handle it.”

After the loss to Alabama, Mississippi State has no room for error and must win out to maintain its playoff position. That shouldn’t be an issue this week, as the Bulldogs host the dismal Vanderbilt Commodores (3-7, 0-6 SEC) in Starkville.

Vanderbilt has an 0-6 record in SEC play this season, including losses to Kentucky and South Carolina (who are 2-5 and 3-5, respectively, in the conference). Most recently, the Commodores lost 34-10 against the Florida Gators. The young team struggled with mistakes against Florida, committing four turnovers. After going to bowl games in each of the last three years, the loss to Florida officially ended Vandy’s hopes of a fourth-straight post-season game.

Vanderbilt head coach Derek Mason knows his team is in for a battle against the potent Bulldogs offense on Saturday, especially since Prescott will be playing to restore his image, which took a hit last weekend against the Crimson Tide.

“The one thing you never see from (Prescott) is frustration, and that’s a true sign of a competitor,” said Mason, who previously coached at Stanford. “I never saw Andrew Luck get frustrated. When you see a guy like that, they’ve got ice water in their veins.”

While Vandy is a huge 30-point underdog, that hasn’t stopped the Commodore players from hoping to play the role of spoiler.

Said Vanderbilt tight end Steven Scheu, “Yeah there is a little incentive in that, but obviously every week in the SEC we play a great opponent. This week is no different. It definitely adds to some of the excitement that we’re going into a hostile environment like Starkville. It’s really exciting and hopefully we can knock them out and get a win this weekend.”

Wishful thinking is all Vanderbilt has to offer, however. Taking Mississippi State and laying the points (-30) is, in reality, the better play.

(Photo credit: Hector Alejandro (flickr) “Players leaving the field 01” [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped.)