NEW MEXICO BOWL PREVIEW: WYOMING VS. FRESNO STATE

The 2009-10 college football bowl season gets underway on Saturday, December 19 with the New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque, NM.  The University of Wyoming from the Mountain West Conference will take on Fresno State from the WAC.  Fresno State has been to its share of bowl games in the past, but Wyoming’s presence in any sort of postseason game is in itself a shock.  The Cowboys have been the personification of ‘doormat’ in recent years and were picked to finish last in the Mountain West Conference.  Fresno State is a -12 favorite with the total set at 55.

There’s a time honored bowl game handicapping concept that you’re best served looking at the underdog in ‘early’ bowl games and the favorite in ‘later’ bowl games.  Some have tried to put more definite parameters on this axiom, suggesting that you should look to the dog in games before New Years’ Day and the favorite after that.  That strict construction oversimplifies the dynamic at work somewhat, but one thing that isn’t under question is that the earlier bowl games—on balance—favor the underdog.

Why is this the case?  There’s a variety of things at work here on both sides of the ledger.  Typically favored teams entered the season with higher aspirations than a mid-December bowl game but fell short along the way.  For this reason, the early season bowl is often more of a ‘consolation prize’ for a season that was good, but not great.  There are exceptions, but the lower profile bowls typically don’t demand the focus and intensity that higher profile ones do from programs that have achieved some measure of success.  The bigger the favorite, the more difficult it is for an early bowl ‘chalk’ to get the win and cover the margin.

On the other side of the equation, early bowl underdogs are frequently programs that have overachieved or are in rebuilding mode.  For them, the bowl game is either a somewhat unexpected perk for a better than anticipated season or often the first tangible validation that a long suffering program has ‘turned the corner’.   Thus the bowl game is often a ‘bigger deal’ to the underdog than it is to the favorite.  The bigger the dog, the more effective the concept is since at some point all a team needs to do to cash tickets for college football betting enthusiasts is to be competitive.

Finally, public perception is always at work in the linesmaking process and early bowl games often pit a ‘name’ team against a program that has enjoyed less success.  This is the case here, and often the public blindly backs a “program” based on reputation rather than look at the specific matchup at hand.  San Jose State has enjoyed decent success while Wyoming has been a laughing stock for years.

Even the most skeptical observer has to concede that it’s a new era in Wyoming football.  Dave Christensen has had to rebuild the long suffering Cowboys from the ground up, making wholesale changes in personnel and tactics.  The results have come about with amazing quickness, as Wyoming finished 6-6 SU this year with a 8-3 ATS mark.  One of the most important marks that Christensen has made on the program is enhancing the team’s toughness.  This is clearly reflected in their performance as an underdog—the Cowboys were 7-3 getting points this season after a pitiful 3-10 ATS mark as a dog the previous two years.

At Fresno, there’s some uncertainty concerning the future of head coach Pat Hill.  Hill has been at the helm for 14 seasons, but his contract ends after this season and as of yet there hasn’t been any interest from the school in extending his contract.  Not surprisingly, there are rumors that Hill is looking at other offers.  His name has been mentioned in connection with a number of programs, particularly UNLV.  Athletic director Thomas Boeh has repeatedly said that he’ll sit down with Hill after the season ends and discuss his future, which sure doesn’t sound like a ‘vote of confidence’.

Much of the mainstream sports media has generalized this as a mismatch in terms of talent where Fresno will run all over a Wyoming defense that struggled against the rush.  That’s not exactly the case, since it neglects the fact that the Cowboys defense faced a brutal schedule including Texas, BYU, Utah along with one of the best rushing teams in the country in TCU and the option attack of Air Force.   And it’s no secret that Wyoming’s personnel aren’t on par with the best teams in their own conference let alone the country.  The Cowboys have compensated for this with an aggressive, takeaway oriented defensive style which—combined with a focus on minimizing mistakes on the other side of the ball—produced a +7 turnover margin (a +29 improvement from 2008 when they had a -22 turnover margin).

Fresno has a decent rushing game, but they’re not exactly world beaters on defense either.  They gave up 50 points plus in two of their last three games.  Junior Ryan Matthews led the nation in rushing and he’s very likely heading to the NFL after this game, giving Fresno an even more ‘lame duck’ mindset.

As a handicapper, when the predominant opinion of the mainstream sports media is that a game is such a one sided affair that the weaker team might as well not show up you pay attention.  This is a classic case of the public ‘overvaluing’ one team and completely ignoring the subjective factors surrounding the contest.  Wyoming might have a talent gap with Fresno, but they had a similar disparity with virtually everyone they played this year and were a very profitable ATS team.  At this price all they need to do is be competitive, and we like their mindset and focus relative to the Bulldogs.  Good value on Wyoming +12, and based on the statistical weakness of the defenses involved the OVER 55 looks like the right position on the total.

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