Amari Cooper
The college football conference championships are upon us, and The Linemakers on Sporting News are here to help you handicap Saturday's betting card, offering analysis, opinions and picks on seven games.
The lines and totals listed below are the Las Vegas consensus as of Friday afternoon. You can check out updated college football point spreads and totals on our live odds page .
Iowa State vs. TCU (-34, 68), 12 p.m. ET, ABC
One of our guys has a lean on the side, the other a lean on the total, but unfortunately the plays don't necessarily correlate. Read up on both and decide who you agree with.
Boise State QB, Fresno State safety Charles Washington in teams' first matchup this season
LAS VEGAS – With most of this week’s media coverage focused on the bigger schools battling for the top four spots in the first-ever College Football Playoff, early betting action at The Wynn has seen a couple major line moves take place in two of Saturday’s lower-profile conference championship games. Bettors are backing Boise State and fading Marshall, mainly due to the competition each team is facing in the Mountain West and Conference USA title games, respectively.
Boise has seen the biggest move of the week, opening as a 17-point favorite at The Wynn on Sunday and jumping up to -22 on Thursday, where the line still resided for the Mountain West Conference Championship Game as of Friday afternoon. The Broncos play Fresno State at home in a rematch of a meeting from earlier this season they won 38-28, also at home, but failed to cover as 18-point chalk. The Bulldogs had gone 0-8 against the spread in the previous eight meetings, winning just one of those games, last year in a 41-40 home victory.
According to Johnny Avello, The Wynn’s executive director of race & sports operations, Fresno should not be compared to last season’s team with quarterback Derek Carr, who is now starting for the Raiders. Avello also said he has seen Boise really turn it on offensively since the teams last played each other and expects to see a higher-scoring game this time around at Bronco Stadium.
“Fresno State’s not a really good team,” Avello said. “This is not the same Fresno State team when Carr was playing. I’d called this an overall successful season. If you go back and look at the game where they played at Boise in October, they lost that game by 10. That game was also bet up from 15.5 to 18. But you go to Wyoming after that game and you get blown out by like four touchdowns, losing to UNLV, who’s a real poor team.
Sergio Aguero
Manchester City will be aiming to maintain the pressure on Chelsea when they welcome Everton to the Etihad Stadium on Saturday (12:30 p.m. ET, NBC).
Manuel Pellegrini's men have gained some ground on the leaders thanks to a run of three-consecutive league wins, and are -215 favorites with William Hill U.S. in Las Vegas to make it four in a row for the first time this season.
With just one win to their name in their last five Premier League fixtures, the Toffees are +580 underdogs to pull off a shock victory at the home of the champions.
Three of those five games have resulted in draws, and you can get odds of +350 on the visitors playing out another stalemate this time out.
The Houston Texans are still alive with an outside shot at the AFC South division title. First, they have to get through an inspired Jags squad at EverBank Field this Sunday.
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