BYU vs. SMU Betting Line September 6

The BYU vs. SMU betting line opened at Mustangs -11 with that number moving up a half point to -11.5 by Sunday afternoon.

BYU Burries Southern Illinois in Week 1

Jake Retzlaff’s three touchdown passes led to BYU beating Southern Illinois 41-13 in its opener.

Retzlaff, who racked up 527 total yards, earned his first career victory as the Cougars’ starting quarterback.

Chase Roberts led the Cougars with 108 yards on seven catches. BYU (1-0) has not lost to an opponent outside the FBS since 1960.

“It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t even our best, but there’s some moments that we had some really good things going,” BYU coach Kalani Sitake said. “I think the experience and the leadership showed up.”

SMU Beats Houston Christian 59-7

Brashard Smith ran for 108 yards and two touchdowns, 348-pound nose tackle Anthony Booker Jr. returned a fumble for a score and SMU routed FCS member Houston Christian 59-7 on Saturday night.

Preston Stone threw for two TDs and Kevin Jennings had one passing and one rushing as the quarterbacks split time in the first home game for SMU (2-0) since joining the Atlantic Coast Conference.

How a Pay Per Head Sets Its College Football Lines

AcePerHead.com uses different factors when setting its college football lines. For starters they take an average of the 5 biggest books in the market and then set the line for each sporting event. Then based on where the action is going the line and the juice gets moved accordingly. Lastly Ace Per Head has some very sharp professional bettors using their site so they also move the line and the juice according to what these professional bettors bet on.

These lines are typically set using the long established Sagarin College Football Ratings.

For the BYU vs. SMU game, Sagarin assigned BYU with a rating of 71.90 and SMU a rating of 75.72 with a home field advantage of 2.45.  These numbers were based on Week 1, however.  While there are going to be some adjustments, neither team is getting a reward for beating third rate competition in their respective Week 1 games.

Using these numbers we get a line of 6.28.  Neither team has a loss coming into Week 2 (SMU is actually 2-0 courtesy of Week 0).  No adjustments are going to change the fact that there is significant overlay with this line.  Our own model likes the dog in situations where there is an overlay only when the number hits 10.5 without dropping below the 10.  The sample size compiled over the past two years is limited however.