With a day-to-night slate of college football set for this weekend, we are more full than after a dinner at T-Bones Chophouse.
“Because of all the different conference alignments, there’s an added degree of excitement and an added degree of the unknown,” said Chuck Esposito, Station Casinos Race and Sports Book Director. “I think it’s going to be new and exciting for not only our side of the counter, but I definitely think for the guests, as well, to kind of see how it all unfolds. It’s definitely a win-win.”
With all that in mind, let’s quickly review the past week in sports and peek at what’s ahead on the STN Sports app and at the STN Sports Books…
College Football
College football came back with a boom for the house. Last weekend saw a minimal schedule of games, but it couldn’t have gone worse for guests, who overwhelmingly opted to side with favorites Florida State, SMU, New Mexico and Hawaii, but all failed to cover the line, and two of them lost outright. The underdogs all rallied like a Democratic convention. Overs, which the public loves to bet, also went 1-3.
“Without tooting our horn or pounding our chest too much between us, that was a really welcome sign for us,” Esposito said.
While this weekend will be stacked with games of extreme long-term importance — Georgia/Clemson and Notre Dame/Texas A&M come to mind — Station Casinos’ guests are looking to make some loot with the hometown team. The UNLV Rebels opened as four-point underdogs against Houston, but the line dropped like RFK. Jr.
“They were point-spread darlings last year,” Esposito said, referring to their 10-3 against-the-spread record. “This shows a strong bias after the way UNLV played last year.” And while UNLV imploded like the Tropicana in the Mountain West Conference Championship and Guaranteed Rate Bowl, bettors are hoping the Rebels can catch lightning in a bottle again and are backing them early on.
Under Weekend?
The smart play of the weekend might be the unders — particularly after seeing what happened in Week 0, where STN Sports Books basked in an Oasis of low-scoring games.
“Early on, I think defenses are ahead of the offense a little bit. When teams get more confident in their systems and different quarterbacks and players develop, that’s when scoring opens up a bit,” Esposito said. Typically in the opening weeks of the season, defensive stars shine like a Champagne Supernova.
Esposito opined, “In the first week or two, you’ve sometimes have a lot of teams that don’t have familiarity playing each other because they’re out-of-conference opponents. I think that that’s why you see some unders early, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the public or the guests are going to bet it that way.”
FSU
After getting beat by an unranked team, Florida State’s National Championship odds climbed higher than a Burning Man attendee.
The Seminoles went undefeated in the regular season last year and made a strong case to be included in the four-team playoffs. Hopes were high that they might return to glory, but a 24-21 loss at the hands of an unranked Georgia Tech team had oddsmakers rethinking the Tallahassee squad’s chances. Florida State opened the season with 14-to-1 odds to win the national title. Those odds are now more than seven times higher.
“There’s serious regression there, and they’re going to have an uphill battle,” Esposito said.
Predicting The Futures
In terms of the future book, the Ohio State Buckeyes have the highest ticket count, which isn’t a huge surprise, as they are usually in the national championship mix (they’re followed by Georgia, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame.) But, a bevy of bettors are hoping for an enormous payday while looking just east of Las Vegas.
The Utah Utes are officially the vogue team of the season. The Utes have high odds to take home the natty when all is said and done, but guests think there’s an outside chance. Utah, always a stalwart on the defensive side of the ball, will have Cam Rising back under center. With Rising, they won back-to-back PAC-12 championships and were often more explosive than the Mirage volcano — especially now! As they now enter the Big 12, Utah is considered by many to be the conference favorite, which would get them into the 12-team playoff.
“Along with Ole Miss, Utah seems to be one of the hotter teams we’ve seen an abundance of money on,” Esposito said. “Compared to some of the SEC and Big Ten teams, you’re getting a good price on Utah. We have the most liability on them out of any team.”
Bets To Know
You can call it a bet – we call it a contest. Time is running out to enter our College and/or Pro Last Man Standing Football Contests.
Each entry costs $25, and any contestant who purchases four entries will receive a fifth free. Active participants must select one game against the spread for each entry each week.
Guaranteed minimum of $100,000 in College, and $150,000 in the Pros.
Weekly Winners
$5 parlay to collect $211.89 – not a bad chunk of change! Nice little 5-teamer from Tuesday:
-Phillies ML vs. Astros -135
-Royals ML vs. Guardians +140
-Cubs ML vs. Pirates -112
-Tigers -1.5 vs. Angels +130
-Athletics ML vs. Reds +133