4. R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl: South Alabama vs WKU
Wednesday, December 21, 9:00, ESPN
ATS Line South Alabama -4.5
Pick South Alabama
This is called massaging the bowl pick. If this was mid-October I wouldn’t be touching this.
WKU has too much offense, it has the ability to go off and hang a huge number on the board if it gets going, and …
It’s not like it beat anyone.
Middle Tennessee and UAB are the only real bowl teams it took down – I’m only half including five-win Rice that got a bowl bid thanks to past teams that went to class. It lost to Troy from the Sun Belt and got walloped by North Texas.
All that, and it’s missing a TON of players.
QB Austin Reed was gone – supposedly to Louisville – until he wasn’t, and now he’s back and all is right with the world. However, the defense that couldn’t afford to lose a lot has to replace a slew of parts to the transfer portal, the receiving corps took a hit, and on the flip side, a rock-solid South Alabama team’s losses were minimal.
By the way, South Alabama lost two games this year. 32-31 to UCLA in a battle it came this close to pulling off if it hadn’t screwed it up, and 10-6 in a weeknight brawl with a terrific Sun Belt champion Troy team that won its bowl game.
The Sun Belt is 3-0 in these bowl things so far. The rest and close-to-all-full Jaguars should add to the winning mix. Giving away 4.5 isn’t enough to be scared off.