5 best predictions for college football bowl games – Friday, December 17 and Saturday, December 18. What games appear to be the best bets and the best picks?
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Even in the best of times trying to bet on bowl games is tricky – teams get out of their respective regular season grooves. In 2020 it was impossible, and in 2021 it’s forget-about-it tough.
But they’re bowl games. You’re going to bet on them.
Trying to navigate through the opt-outs, coaching changes, and relative interest among the various teams, here are five of the best-looking investment opportunities for the first batch on Friday, December 17th and Saturday, December 18th.
Good luck and godspeed.
Click on each game for the preview
5. Coastal Carolina vs Northern Illinois: Tailgreeter Cure Bowl
LINE Coastal Carolina -11
ATS PICK Northern Illinois
How much do you believe that the regular season could carry over into the bowls? If you think that’s possible, then Northern Illinois shouldn’t have a problem covering this.
Those are a whole lot of points to be giving away to the champion of the MAC. Some might be freaked out by the late-season blowout loss to Western Michigan – NIU already had a spot in the MAC Championship wrapped up.
Northern Illinois is a badly flawed team in a whole lot of ways, and there’s reason to be concerned against an ultra-efficient, high-powered Coastal Carolina squad.
The Huskies don’t do much to pressure the backfield, they give up a whole lot of yards, and they don’t come up with enough takeaways or third down stops.
However, they’re great at dominating the time of possession, and they should be able to counteract what Coastal Carolina does by grinding and grinding some more.
The Chanticleers are more fun, more explosive, and more splashy on both sides of the ball, but they also struggled against mediocre team after mediocre team over the back half of the season.
The best win of the year was against … Kansas? Troy? You have as many wins over 2021 bowl teams as Coastal Carolina does.
That doesn’t mean the Sun Belt star can’t and won’t win this, and there’s a historical reason to think there could be a problem for Northern Illinois. The Huskies haven’t just lost their last six bowl games going back to the 2011 GoDaddy.com against Arkansas State; they’ve been annihilated in most of them.
This Northern Illinois is good at making teams play at its pace.
Now, if Toledo has problems in the Bahamas Bowl early on Friday and if Northern Illinois gets bombed on in this, avoid the MAC fast. But until that happens …
11 is a big number to be giving away here.
– CFN Experts Picks: Bowls Dec 17-27