We’ll start the college football bowl season with free picks on Saturday’s New Mexico Bowl game in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Early season bowl games in general are a great moneymaking opportunity for several reasons that we’ll discuss momentarily.  This one, in particular, looks strong as the know-nothings in the mainstream sports media are out there spreading their disinformation that this game is a mismatch and that one team might as well not bother showing up.  I hope they keep doing it, since it gives us more line value on the underdog but they’re wrong in general about bowl games of this type and in particular about the Wyoming Cowboys team that is being branded as vastly overmatched relative to Fresno State.

New Mexico Bowl

Wyoming vs. Fresno State

Saturday, December 19th 4:30 Pacific (ESPN)

Here’s a good rule of thumb for playing early season bowl games.  In most cases the matchups, emotional/subjective factors and pointspread pricing favors a play on the underdog.  If its a matchup between a ‘name’ program and a lesser known one, so much the better.  Ditto for games like this one that the mainstream sports media is trying to suggest is some sort of a ‘mismatch’.  A favorite topic of the sports media this time of year is ranting about how many ‘meaningless’ bowl games are on the schedule.  Not really sure what their point is, since a game like this one doesn’t do anything to take away from the significance of the Rose Bowl or BCS Championship game.  A lot of their disdain is hypocritical, since the proliferation of bowl games happened concurrently with the growth of cable and satellite TV and 24 hour a day sports programming.

These games are certainly not ‘meaningless’ to the teams involved, but there’s a catch here–they’re more ‘meaningless’ to some teams than others.  And that’s where you can often find good wagering value in early bowl games.  Invariably, these games matchup teams from a better known program against an ‘upstart’.  For the more traditionally successful team, a low profile bowl might be just another game, or even a ‘chore’ or disappointment.  For the ‘upstart’ program, however, its a big deal and often the first tangible sign that the program is headed in the right direction.  And that’s definitely the case here.  In one corner, we’ve got a mentally and physically tired Fresno State team who is making their second straight trip to New Mexico.  The program was hoping for a bid too the Hawaii Bowl but that didn’t happen so its back to Albuquerque.  And no matter how much you love green chiles and New Mexican food, there’s a big difference between Hawaii and Albuquerque.  It also gives Fresno State a week less of preparation and recovery time from their season ending shootout with Illinois.  Fresno also had one of the most logistically demanding travel schedules in the country, with several cross country trips.  Throw into the mix that head coach Pat Hill is reportedly angling for the vacant job at UNLV, and you’ve got all the makings of a team with questionable focus.

In the other corner, we have the long suffering Wyoming Cowboys.  Former Missouri offensive coordinator Dave Christensen was nothing short of a miracle worker in his first season in Laramie, and has rebuilt the program from the ground up.  The most important thing he’s done is give this instill toughness and discipline, transforming Wyoming into a team that doesn’t beat itself.  Case in point:  Wyoming cut their turnovers this year from 36 in 2008 down to 13.  That’s half as many as Fresno State gave up.   Most importantly, perhaps, is that this team is genuinely excited about playing in any bowl game.

The more the mainstream sports media talks about how Fresno State is vastly superior than Wyoming, the more it plays into our hands in terms of the Bulldogs possible lack of intensity.  It certainly helps us from a line value standpoint.  Pat Hill’s form in bowl games is pretty clear:  5-0 as an underdog, 0-4 as a favorite.  We’ll gladly take the generous points offered with a Cowboys’ team that went 8-3 ATS this year.  They’ll be in this game throughout and could pull the outright upset.

Bet WYOMING +11 over Fresno State

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