NCAA Football: Guaranteed Rate bowl lines for the Gophers and West Virginia

Back to being a degenerate, welcome to my journey.

Bowl games are really tricky to predict because they really often come down to which team has really been preparing to win the game and which team is really just enjoying the bowl experience. Of course everyone involved cares about winning, but you see it all the time that some teams really aren’t playing with the edge necessary to win,

You also now have to factor in which players are opting out of the bowls to get ready for the draft and not sustain an pointless injury.

But with all of that said, let’s look at the Gophers and West Virginia’s bowl matchup, because that’s the one we care about the most. For those of you outside of the state of Minnesota,

Guaranteed Rate Bowl

Spread: Minnesota -5 per DraftKings

This one was once -3.5 and is moving toward Minnesota. West Virginia is a passing team, Minnesota is a running team. The Mountaineers were last in the Big 12 in rushing and 3rd in overall passing. But that didn’t necessarily translate to points as they still finished 8th in their conference in points scored.

I think Minnesota wins this game and covers for a couple reasons.

1 - they have a defense.

2 - I think this team is coming in with some juice. The bulk of the offensive skill position players are coming back and appear to be energized by the return of Kirk Ciarrocca at offensive coordinator. So far nobody has opted out of the bowl game and I anticipate a lot of Gopher scoring in this game. I’m not concerned about the 3.5 points.

Props: but lets have some fun with prop bets in this game.

Points 44.5: take the over

I think the Gophers go over 30 in this one and expect West Virginia to get at least 2 touchdowns.

Tanner Morgan passing yards: take the over

I think the combination of Matt Simon and Ciarrocca this game and I foresee them using this game to revitalize the Gopher passing game and put on film what a dynamic offense this can be. I suspect there is going to be a statement made in this game.

I haven’t seen an individual number line yet, but I’ll go over

DISCLAIMER: Odds/lines subject to change. T&Cs apply. See draftkings.com/sportsbook for details.