5. Syracuse at Ohio
LINE Syracuse -1
ATS PICK Syracuse
Just go with the percentages.
Over the last five years, the Power Five programs – ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC – have beaten the Group of Five programs – AAC, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt – around 75% of the time straight up.
Against the spread is a different story, but it usually takes some big upset, or some Kansas losses, or some monster Gof5 team to pull off a win over the bigger, richer, deeper football programs.
All you’re asking is for the Power Five program to beat the Group of Five program. That’s it. You don’t need anything funkier than that.
As bad as Syracuse has been lately under Dino Babers, and as ugly as the loss was to Liberty last year, the program beat a solid Western Michigan team 52-33 in 2019 and shut out Liberty to start the season. The program suffered an embarrassing home loss to Middle Tennessee in 2017, lost to a strong USF in 2015 and 2016, and …
That’s about it for a long stretch, because Power Five programs just don’t lose to teams outside of the Power Five all that often.
Ohio’s last win over a Power Five program was at home against 2017 Kansas, and for Babers’ sake, this Syracuse team should be much, much better than that Jayhawks squad.
I’m stalling here and saying a lot of words to do nothing more but feed into my Power Five Is Better arrogance.
Take the Power Five team, and be happy for the Group of Five program if it goes the other way.