Place Your Bets.....

Today was a big day for most of the degenerative class of America as the early Vegas lines came out for the first week of college football games. And well, the news for Kentucky fans is.....not really surprising I guess, but I hope a bit sobering for those booking Music City Bowl hotel rooms. The experts in Vegas (who you conservatives out there should listen to since their opinions are based on the free market) believe that the Cards are a 24 1/2 favorite over the Cats for the opening contest. Now before we go further, we must study that number because it really is quite staggering. It is very rare for a Vegas football number to ever be above 20 and it happens almost never when both teams in the game are from major conferences. Due to the oddities of college football blowouts, Vegas lines will never really go over 30, because the theory is that at this point in the games, teams play their worst players and the score is not reflective of the ability of the teams and rather reflects the worst word to all Vegas bookies, luck. So a 24 1/2 point spread is really quite, quite large. But is it deserved? Well objectively, probably yes. Louisville is a team that at least theoretically could contend nationally for a title and certainly is directly in the mix for a BCS bid. They are playing at home with offensive weapons that are likely as good as anything Kentucky will see this season (and virtually all are in-state incidently) and are hungry to make up for last year's too close from their perspective, game. Kentucky is well....they are likely better, but probably dont have the fire power to win a shoot out against the Ville and thus must rely on their improving defense to shut them down....a proposition that is unlikely. So if you were putting money today, what should you do? I likely would go with the Cats and take the points. These games in this series are often closer than they should be and the Ville offensive machine will likely be slightly rusty coming out of the gate as Brohm gets used to full time quarterbacking duties. I think the Ville wins....rather easily, but the game ends up more like 21 than 24, thus giving Cats fans a monetary, if not a scoreboard victory. Hey as a UK football fan, you take what you can get....