ST. PETERSBURG BOWL PICKS AND ANALYSIS: UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA VS. RUTGERS

We’re going to repeat this throughout the early part of the bowl season, so get used to it:  the best place to begin any handicapping of the early college football bowl games is with the underdog.   College football betting experts know that they are often the more motivated side and at this level of bowl game that motivation can often produce an outright victory.  In the St. Petersburg Bowl between Central Florida and Rutgers there’s a lot of other factors at work pointing us in the direction of the UCF Knights.  Rutgers is a -3 favorite in the game with the total set at 44'.

An obvious factor in favor of the Conference USA entrant Central Florida is the venue.  This game will be played at Tropicana Field home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team.  It’s also an easy 90 minute drive down I-4 Westbound from the UCF campus in Orlando, making this a de facto home game for the Knights.  In addition to the home field advantage, there’s a good deal of ‘provincial pride’ at stake concerning Rutgers’ heavy recruiting in the Sunshine State.  Rutgers has gone as far to implement a billboard campaign throughout the state of Florida, and clearly UCF has a vested interest in keeping blue chip local talent at home.

Central Florida has never won a bowl game, and this is likely the best opportunity they’ve been afforded.  Rutgers is making their fifth straight bowl appearance, but that’s more of a sign of clever scheduling than anything else.  This season, for example, Rutgers’ non-conference schedule consisted of Army, Howard, Florida International and Texas Southern.  They played only one road game all season against a team with a winning record, edging UConn on the basis of their +4 turnover margin despite being outgained 481-241 until that point.  Perhaps the biggest liability that Rutgers brings into this matchup is their porous offensive line—they led the nation this season in ‘sacks allowed’ and were 99th in total offense.

That offensive line issue is a huge problem here as Central Florida was a top five team in both rushing defense and sacks.  That means that Rutgers’ quarterback Tom Savage will have to throw the ball a lot under pressure.   On the other side of the ball, Rutgers has decent defensive statistical numbers though a lot of that is clearly a function of their weak non-conference schedule.  UCF played better coming down the stretch, winning five of their last six games.  Rutgers, meanwhile, lost two of their last three.  Worth noting that Central Florida will enter this matchup with an additional week of rest and preparation time.

The difficult thing to figure out is that given the matchups, location, and motivation in this game why is Rutgers a pointspread favorite?  The easy answer—public perception.  Rutgers is a well known program and they’re favored here more on the basis of their ‘brand name’ rather than any intrinsic edge in this matchup.  A look at the two team’s college football pointspread records for the season underscore the difference between a team overvalued and undervalued by the wagering public:   Central Florida was 9-2 against the spread including 4-1 as an underdog.  Rutgers, conversely, was 5-6 ATS including a 3-5 mark as a favorite.  Central Florida +3 is a great value position, and they’re also worth a look on the moneyline at +125

Bet the St. Petersburg Bowl: Rutgers vs. Central Florida at Sports-1