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3 Best Early Over Bets on 2020 College Football Win Totals

Jordan Horrobin

by Jordan Horrobin in College Football

Updated Mar 29, 2021 · 1:40 PM PDT

Ohio State's Trey Sermon and Justin Fields celebrate during a game.
Ohio State's Trey Sermon (8) and Justin Fields celebrate during an NCAA college football game against Michigan State, Saturday, Dec. 5, 2020, in East Lansing, Mich. Ohio State won 52-12. (AP Photo/Al Goldis)
  • The early over/under regular-season win totals are out for each FBS school entering the 2020 season
  • Clemson leads the way with an over/under of 11.5 wins, while some lines are as low as 1.5
  • Check out three of the best early “over” bets, below

A shred of normalcy has returned to college football, as the early over/under regular-season win total odds came out recently, allowing bettors to think ahead to when the sport will (hopefully) return.

Each FBS school received a win total ranging from 1.5 wins to 11.5. Instead of combing through each school’s 2020 College Football win totals, we’ve laid out three schools here that we think have a great chance to hit the “over” in the upcoming season.

2020 NCAAF Win Total Odds

Team Over/Under Over Under
Ohio State 10.5 -210 +175
Ohio 5.5 -125 +105
University of Massachusetts 1.5 -160 +140

Odds taken April 10.

As you can tell, not all three are blue chip football programs. But thinking outside the box can be a good thing for bettors. So with that, let’s take a look at the case for betting “over” on each of these schools.

Ohio State

The Buckeyes are among the most dominant programs in recent history (and all-time, actually, with a .729 win percentage that ranks second only to Boise State). In the past eight seasons, they’ve lost multiple regular-season games only once.

That instance was 2017, with a fluky loss to unranked Iowa and a loss to playoff-bound Oklahoma, which was led by eventual Heisman winner Baker Mayfield.

Ohio State doesn’t have any Oklahoma-caliber non-conference opponents on its 2020 schedule. Its toughest non-conference game will likely be Oregon (reigning Rose Bowl champ), but the Ducks are losing quarterback Justin Herbert to the NFL. Herbert’s presumed successor, Tyler Shough, has two career pass attempts.

The toughest game overall will be at Penn State (o/u 9.5 wins), a team the Buckeyes beat 28-17 in Columbus last year.

As for its own roster, the Buckeyes return Heisman favorite quarterback Justin Fields, leading receiver Chris Olave, half the defense, and more. They are in excellent position to run through the Big Ten again, which is why they’re heavy favorites for a four-peat.

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Ohio

Staying in-state, we look to the Bobcats. They’ve been champions of mediocrity for 15 years under coach Frank Solich, and the coming season does not promise to be different.

But here’s the thing: they don’t have losing seasons. For 11 consecutive years, they have won six-plus regular season games.

Their non-conference schedule is quite favorable, with games against North Carolina Central (an FCS school), Texas State (o/u 3.5 wins), Boston College (o/u 4.5 wins), and Marshall (o/u 6.5 wins). The Bobcats should be able to find at least three wins in there, which means they’d only need three wins in eight conference games to cover.

It just so happens that the Mid-American Conference looks like a coin flip this year, with nine of the twelve teams posting o/u win totals between 5.5 and 7.5 (Buffalo has the MAC’s highest win total, 7.5, and Ohio gets to face them at home).

Unfortunately, Ohio does have a new quarterback under center after Nathan Rourke graduated. But the successor could very well be Kurtis Rourke (yes, Nathan’s brother), who enrolled early and is already learning the playbook.

Ohio also deploys a run-heavy offense that should help the young quarterback. Its two leading rushers (De’Montre Tuggle and O’Shaan Allison) will both be back in the fall after combining for 1,710 scrimmage yards and 18 touchdowns last year.

UMass

OK, hear me out. This one might sound a bit crazy but there’s a method to the madness. Essentially, the argument is that UMass can’t possibly be as bad as they were last year — and all they have to do is win two games!

In 2019, the Minutemen went 1-11 (with their only win coming over 0-12 Akron). They were under a new head coach, Walt Bell, and the season was simply a mess.

UMass didn’t have a full allotment of scholarship players (NCAA limit is 85 — for some games they dressed as few as half of that), they had players get suspended for missing curfew (including the starting quarterback) and some players left the program mid-season.

In Bell’s second year, with some of his own recruits in the program, things should certainly start moving in the right direction. And here’s the Minutemen’s most reasonable path to hitting their over: they host Albany (an FCS school) on mid-September and head to Akron (reminder, winless last year) a month later.

If they win those two games, they’re in the clear. If not, they have 10 other games to roll the dice on. But it’s clear UMass is already making strides with Bell. Their 2020 recruiting class had an improved composite ranking over the 2019 class and is better than a handful of its opponents (including Akron, New Mexico State and Liberty).

Nationally, their 247 Sports recruiting class ranking was No. 100, up from No. 114 the previous year.

Others To Consider

In case you’re wary about putting faith in a team like UMass that was legitimately terrible in 2019, or a middling MAC team like Ohio, here are some other schools to consider: Cincinnati (over 8.5, -145), Boise State (over 9.5, -145) and Auburn (over 8.5, -210).

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