College Football “Week 0” Opening Lines

College football is officially back! Kind of!

This sport has all sorts of weird and whacky quirks but one of the best is “Week 0”, wherein a bunch of teams play college football but the season has not officially started yet. Awesome.

But, hey! Games means gambling opportunities so here’s the list of games for Saturday along with the spread and over/unders for each game. I also gave you a little reason to watch if you needed a reason.

Which you don’t. Because it’s college football. And the offseason is 9 months long.

All games for Week 0 are on Saturday, August 27th. All time central. For the betting odds we’re using DraftKings Sportsbook, who is an SBNation parter.

11:30a: Northwestern at Nebraska (-12) - O/U 50.5 [in Dublin, Ireland]

College football wants to grow its impact across the globe and they export Northwestern/Nebraska on the unsuspecting Irish? Sure! Nebraska was the best 3-win team of all time last year, outscoring their opponents 335-272 yet going an unfathomable 0-8 in one-score games.

3:00p: UConn at Utah State (-28) - O/U 60.5

Former Arkansas State head coach Blake Anderson inherited a talented but flawed roster from perpetual self-sabotaging sourpuss Gary Andersen and immediately turned them into Mountain West title contenders. UConn has yet to reclaim the “magic” of the FIRST Randy Edsall era - in which they appeared in a BCS bowl - and might be eyeing a move back down to FCS soon. Yikes.

3:00p: Wyoming at Illinois (-10) - O/U 44

Illinois and Missouri should open every year with the Arch Rivalry in the dome in St. Louis, but instead, the Illini get to play host to previous Missouri-season-ruiner, Wyoming. Year 1 of Bret Bielema ended with a 5-7 campaign and the usual modest recruiting finish. Not much is expected out of the second year of “BERT” but avoiding an Week 0 loss would be in their best interest.

6:00p: Charlotte at Florida Atlantic (-7) - O/U 57

Will Healy is a cool, young coach who has put the 49er program on the map but suffered a setback last year. Willie Taggart has failed down after landing his dream job at Florida State and is desperate to right the ship, both with his program and his career. Earliest season “Anxiety Bowl” of all time?

8:00p: North Texas at UTEP (+1) - O/U 55

After putting up a fight at Missouri last season, the Mean Green actually finished strong, somehow postponing the inevitable-yet-never-happening firing of Seth Littrell. After missing the postseason for six straight years, Dana Dimel’s Miner program finally made it to a bowl last year and might finally be turning the corner.

9:00p: Nevada (-9) at New Mexico State - O/U 53

The Jerry Kill experiment kicks off in Las Cruces as future opponent New Mexico State takes on a Nevada program that just lost one of its best coaches of all time because it didn’t want to pay him. Upset special here.

9:30p: Vanderbilt (-6.5) at Hawai’i - O/U 55

Another moribund program on Mizzou’s schedule, Year Two of the Clark Lea-flavored Vanderbilt Commodores gets to go on vacation play Hawai’i in the smallest stadium in FBS, after historic Aloha Stadium was officially condemned at the conclusion of the ‘19 season. Hawai’i made noise by hiring its former golden-boy quarterback, Timmy Chang, as head coach this past season while Vanderbilt has improved recruiting but still has a long ways to go. Stay up late to see if SEC magic can cross the Pacific Ocean.

Odds/lines subject to change. T&Cs apply. See draftkings.com/sportsbook for details.