College Football is back, I stayed away from week zero but the A-Train Corp. Syndicate is ready for week one, and as per usual we won’t shy away from the big games.

Thursday Night (Tonight)

Usually, I write WTB on Friday, but we have games all through the weekend so I’m posting a day earlier. The Biggest Game of the evening is a conference matchup in the Big Ten West Division when Northwestern travels to West Layafette Indiana to take on Purdue.

I’m approaching this game as if Clayton Thorson will play for Northwestern. Purdue opened at -3 and the line has dropped to -1. That is honestly fine by me. We made money last year betting on the Boilermakers early in the season. While I like both coaches, I really believe in Jeff Brohm. Our lean is on the Boilermakers to cover and a slight lean on the over (52.5). The Boilermaker offense is listed as returning 13 starters a feat that I didn’t know was possible since you can only start 11.  If you want to bet real money on Purdue vs Northwestern my advice is Boiler-Over.

Wake Forest (-6.5) at Tulane (O/U – 57)

I have a gut instinct on the over in this game. I feel like I watched a lot of Wake Forest games go over last year. I’m not worried that Tulane does nothing but run it. I think they should be able to run if for a few scores at home in a night game in New Orleans.

Central Florida (-23.5) at Connecticut  (O/U – 72)

I don’t give a shit about this game except to gauge Central Florida in the post-Scott Frost era. Josh Heupel comes from Mizzou and is expected to run plays at an even faster pace than Frost.  I have no play here. I think Unconn stinks, a lot of people like the over. I’m not so sure about that because of how bad Uconn is. I don’t know if they can hold up their end of an over-bargain.

New Mexico State at Minnesota: This line went from -18 to -22 probably based solely on the fact that New Mexico State looked like a dog-shit football team on national television week zero. I have no doubt that Minnesota wins this game, but they are starting a true freshman walk-on in Zack Annexstad. Annexstad spurned a couple other D-1 offers including one from the University of Illinois, to walk on as a Golden Gopher. It paid off and he won the job, but how effective will he be in his first ever start? An even better question is how will I refrain from calling this guy Zack Amistad by mistake. You guys remember Amistad right? The movie about all the slaves who take over the slave ship and then get put on trial. Probably not what I should be calling the whitest QB in existence.

Soooo do you trust this guy to cover 22 points? It’s a home opener at night on national television and NMSU just played on Saturday….now they go to a hostile environment in Minnesota. I’m scared by the line but gun to my head….I roll with Amistad and the Golden Gopher…not because of how bad NMSU looked but because they looked that bad at home….and now play a night road game on short rest. Did I just talk myself into a go-go-gopher bet?

I’m going to post this as a part one now so it has some time on the interwebs before these games kick-off…part 2 to come A-Train Out.