5 College Football Betting Trends for Week 12

Week 12 college football betting began with three MACtion games on Tuesday night and will end with Nevada seeking their seventh ATS win of the season (at San Diego State) on Saturday night.

Here are five college football betting trends for Week 11 (odds as of Wednesday, Nov. 17):

Post-Ohio State Fade

One week after losing to Ohio State in the season opener, Minnesota failed to cover against Miami (OH) at home. It was the first of six straight ATS losses for teams after playing the Buckeyes in their previous game.

Since 2011, teams are 37-73-1 (regular season) against the spread in their first game after playing Ohio State, including just 3-10 the last two years.

Purdue is a 10.5-point road favorite against Northwestern on Saturday after last week’s loss in Columbus.

Western Outliers

In NFL betting this season, there have been 33 games in which one team entered with an ATS losing streak of at least one game faced a team with an ATS winning streak of at least one game, i.e., a team that didn’t cover in their previous game vs. a team that did cover in their previous game. 

The losing-streak team is 27-6 against the spread in those games.

In college football, the trend is flipped, albeit not as dramatically: Losing-streak teams are 37-50-1 ATS. Within that trend, there is a bizarre outlier: Losing-streak teams from the Pac-12 and Mountain West are 11-2 ATS. All other losing-streak teams in college football are 26-48-1.

There are two games in Week 12 for this trend: Washington at Colorado, and Arizona State at Oregon State. Washington and Oregon State are the losing-streak teams.

Mountain West Unders

Unders are doing well across college football, and they’ve been especially profitable in Mountain West games with higher totals.

In Mountain West conference games, unders are 22-15 (.595), the best mark for any conference. And they’re 15-7 (.682) when the total is higher than 46, including five unders in the last six opportunities.

Four Mountain West games have a total greater than 46 this weekend:

• Nevada at Air Force (52)
• Wyoming at Utah State (52.5)
• New Mexico at Boise State (48)
• Colorado State at Hawai’i (54)

Florida’s Slow Starts

Florida hasn’t completely sucked at covering the spread in conference games this season (3-4) but they have completely sucked at covering the first-half spread in conference games.

In trailing South Carolina by 20 points in Week 10, Florida failed to cover -10 and dropped to 0-7 against first-half spreads in SEC games. And they haven’t been close recently, failing to cover by at least 14 points in each of their last three games.

The Gators are a 4-point first-half road favorite against Missouri on Saturday.

First-Half Trend Reversal

One week after scoring seven points in a loss to Wisconsin, Rutgers scored 17 first-half points against Indiana, leading 17-3 at halftime. Despite the offensive outburst, the first-half under (21.5) still hit.

It was one of 38 games this season in which each failed to score at least 20 points in their previous game. The first-half under is 22-14-1 in those games after going 16-19 last season and 84-103-3 from 2017-20.

There are three games this week in which both teams failed to score at least 20 points in their previous game:

• Cal at Stanford (21.5)
• South Alabama at Tennessee (34.5)
• Temple at Tulsa (27.5)