Week 1 CFB Picks

Friday Mornings Around 9:15 I jump on our sister station Fox Sports Radio to pick this weeks biggest games with local sports legend Teddy Heffner We have to pick against the spread. Those are the point spreads Teddy found earlier in the week so the current spread is irrelevant for our contest. Now if you'd like to pick your 7 and see if you do better than me, you could win a Mathias Sandwich Tailgate Special. You just text your picks to 803-315 3292 to be entered. You don't need to explain your picks like I do below.

This weeks games

Miami -2.5 at Florida 3:30 on ABC

Gators have won 33 home openers in a row! Last home opener loss was in 1989 to Mississippi! Even regular games they're tough to beat. Since 2015 they're 43-12. It's tough to win in the swamp! The swamp creatures will be full throated with Miami in their building. But the Hurricanes are favs for a reason. Preseason ranking of 19 means they're good. Every season a team is new based off the fact so many starters graduated but also underclassman developed. So it's impossible to really know what we'll see. However neither team was top 10 in any meaningful category last year. The closest was Miami who was #11 in run defense. You can build on that. FL was 77th in rushing. So if they can force Graham Mertz into obvious pass situations, whom last year was ranked 40th in the country, they can get a pick or 2. Gimme the Hurricanes and start the Billy Napier will be fired on what date, pool.

Notre Dame +2.5 at Texas A&M 7:30 on ABC

ABC is loaded this week and another SEC huge home field advantage. The Aggies 12th man is legendary and Kyle Field is always recognized as one of the loudest stadiums in the nation, which I guess explains why they're 2.5 point favorites. Notre Dame is #7 in the country while A&M is #20. This is Notre Dame's biggest game of the year as the only other top 20 team they will face is the newly debunked FSU Seminoles in November. Win this game and you'll be heavy favorites in every other game this year. For A&M this is just another game in the SEC. They've got 5 more top 20 teams to battle so it's not like the team can be laser focused on just this game. And for some reason the computer models are picking the Irish to win outright! So I'll take the points.

USC +4.5 vs LSU 7:30 on Big 10 Network

An epic event from Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas. 2 of the blue bloods go at it. LSU QB Garrett Nussmeier & USC QB Miller Moss are replacing the last two Heisman Trophy winners (LSU's Jayden Daniels, 2023 Heisman Trophy winner and USC's Caleb Williams, 2022 Heisman Trophy winner).The last time USC played a team from the SEC it was ironically the 2016 season opener when the Trojans lost 6-52 to Alabama on a neutral field. That is also the last time they lost a season opener. LSU has had it much rougher as of late. They have lost the last 4 season openers. Fear the thumb! For USC I'm not as concerned about replacing the Heisman winner and that offense as I am getting a new defense. Ranked 116th last year they absolutely sucked on D. Their offense was #10. LSU however not much better on D at 110th and their offense was #1! We don't know how the QB's will play, or how their fixes to the D will work. So based on that I'll pick LSU to cover because they're SEC.

UNC -2 at Minnesota 8:00 on Fox

Give me Mack Brown to cover.

Virginia Tech -13 at Vanderbilt Noon on ESPN

The Hokies visit Nashville as almost 2 TD favorites. Clark Lea needs to improve on last years 2 win performance. They actually opened 2-0 and proceeded to get blown out of pretty much every game after that. The year before that had 5 wins including back to back wins near the end of the season over Florida and Kentucky which had led to a contract extension and high hopes for 2023. But after a dismal return to the 2021 record and now only 9 wins in 3 years things aren't looking too good.  Jerry Kill appointed as Vanderbilt’s "chief consultant to the head coach" so perhaps his decades of wisdom may help. They also have an all new offensive coaching staff so it's near impossible for VT to know what to expect. The thing that seems to hurt them the most is the O-line which returns 5 starters this year. So unless they all had a dramatic improvement in the off season it's difficult to draw up plays when the run game is ranked 124th like last years team. Like most teams Vandy will face VT is has better athletes at just about every position. I think Vandy may get as much as 10 points but I see VT with 4 or more TDs meaning they should cover rather easily.

Georgia -13.5 vs Clemson Noon on ABC

This is at an alleged neutral site but everyone knows playing in Atlanta is basically a home game for Georgia. The last time they did this was 2021 in Charlotte as a way for #3 Clemson to have home field advantage. That game was very close with #5 Georgia sneaking a win out 10-3. Later Clemson was exposed as a fraud by barely beating unranked Georgia Tech in week 3 and losing in week 4 to unranked NC State. Fans began calling for a swap of QB DJ Uiagalelei. The nation also questioned mighty Georgia for struggling so hard against the Tigers. They silenced their doubters by crushing every opponent by 3 TD's or more up to the SEC championship which they lost to Alabama. Then they went back to work and crushed #2 Michigan by 23 and in their rematch against #1 Alabama smoked them by 2 TD's. This season Georgia is preseason #1 and may be better than last season's team which was undefeated except for the loss again in the SEC championship to Alabama. Clemson seems to have slipped from the golden years when they ended the season top 5 between 2015 and 2020. The last 3 season's they haven't cracked the top 10 and ended 2023 at #20. Still very good but not the elite team of last decade. I haven't seen or heard anything to make me think that will change this year so I imagine with the #1 QB in CFB he should be able to cover any challenges the Bulldogs have after losing their top 3 receivers to the NFL last year and their #5 receiver Rara Thomas got himself arrested and kicked off the team. Home field vibe for the #1 team I take the Bulldogs to cover. Side note if Clemson loses the ACC won't have a top 10 team because it's doubtful that even if #19 Miami beats unranked FL that bumps them up 9 or more spots. With ACC down and most playing non ranked non con games it will then take some help to get anyone back in the top 10 this season.

Old Dominion +19.5 at South Carolina 4:15 on ESPN

Gamecocks come off a very disappointing 2023 and lose their best receiver and QB! A ton of questions about this team that will probably not be answered against this team. The Monarchs are going to struggle on offense. The Gamecocks were OK on D last year and are expected to be better this year with maturation of Debo Williams, Boogie Huntley, O'Donnell Fortune, DQ Smith, Nick Emmanwori, Judge Collier, Jason Kilgore and Coach Beamer says he's expecting a very big year for Bam Martin Scott. But unless this side of the ball can score for them as well I don't see how I can pick the Gamecocks to win by 20 or more. New look O line, new QB, new RB, basically a new offense usually takes a few games to start clicking. I'm expecting them to score, just not a lot. 24-10 feels about right for this one so I'm picking ODU to cover.

Tie Breaker Rushing Yards For Rocket Sanders.

Like I said it's all new Offense this year featuring Arkansas transfer Rocket Sanders. As a freshman he was very good averaging 5.1 YPC. As a sophomore considered one of the best in the country at 6.5 YPC! Dowell Loggins worked with the offense but was only the TE Coach 2021 and 2022. He is very familiar with how Rocket had those 2 seasons and both men are hoping that they can put together one of those type of seasons again here. But no doubt 2023 was a disappointing season. YPC dropped in half to 2.9. And the cherry on top was he tore his labrum during the Razorbacks’ final game so he was still rehabbing and was unable to play in the USC spring game. I'm going to go for 75 yards rushing basing it off a tad over 5 YPC and 14 attempts.