Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

If you’re anything like us, you spent the offseason doing pretty much nothing but preparing for the season and binge-watching TV. But there’s only so much prep work you can do.

Football previews (like ours) are all we really have when picking games for Week One. We have no idea how to figure out who is going to live up to the hype, who won’t and who’s completely under the radar.

It’s only slightly better than a shot in the dark.

In fact, you probably shouldn’t do it at all, kind of like you shouldn’t have watched that fourth straight episode of your new favorite show at 3 a.m. But we do it because it’s so much fun. So instead of rehashing all the tired team previews to make our picks, we thought it would be fun to use the shows we watched to inspire the first week’s winners.

Jacksonville State at Arkansas (no line): John L. Smith is very similar to Carrie Mathison from Homeland. Pretty much everyone in the world thinks they’re absolutely crazy. But, there is the chance that they’ve actually got everything figured out and see something us plain folks don’t have the vision to see. And not only do they see it, they have the conviction not to care what anybody else says. The question is whether they can prove the skeptics wrong.

Vegas normally doesn’t set lines for games between Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision teams because typically the FBS team can pick the score (can the NCAA make a rule that disallows the scheduling of games so weak that Vegas doesn’t even set a line for it?). If Arkansas is using this game for practice, we will as well. So this isn’t a bet, but we’ll say The Fightin’ L.'s win by a lot.

Tennessee (-3.5) vs. North Carolina State: Derek Dooley is absolutely Louie. He seems like the kind of guy whom you’d call on a given day and ask him how he’s doing and he’d say, “I’m fine. I’ve had a stupid day.” Then, when he was sneaking a smoke while sitting on the toilet next to the open window, he’d explain how his quarterback was in court for “hot dogging” on a jet ski, or he kicked off his top returning receiver for a bunch of failed drug tests, or he still hasn’t gotten over this. We look forward to seeing what comedic misfortunes befall the Vols this season, but not too many misfortunes because we want Dooley to keep his job and we will pick Tennessee to cover against the Wolfpack.

Boise State (+6.5) at Michigan State: Like Jon Snow on Game of Thrones, Boise State is the unfortunate, illegitimate son of college football who is permanently assigned to the distant North. We’ll never know how good the Broncos have actually been because most of the college football universe didn’t take them seriously enough to put them in the championship game, just as Snow hasn’t gotten to fight in the war to defend his family’s honor due to his sacred life-duty to protect a wall. Unfortunately, Boise’s opportunity to be an elite program may have passed now that Kellen Moore and many of the top players from the Broncos’ run as a top 5 team are gone. Michigan State, however, seems to have a lot of positive momentum. The Spartans just have to cover one touchdown at home? Deal. Michigan State covers.

Alabama (-13) vs. Michigan: Unfortunately for everyone else, Nick Saban is the Raylan Givens of the college football world. Justified’s Givens and Saban are the ones with targets on their back, even if everyone else also knows they’re the smartest and slickest people in the room. And, in the most recent season of Justified, the main villain was a destined-to-fail squad from … Michigan. Denard Robinson will have to prove he’s developed enough as a passer to have any chance to beat the Tide defense, and even if he can pass it won’t be easy. And Alabama’s offense in underrated. Like Givens, I expect Saban and the Crimson Tide to vanquish their Michigan foe by at least 13 points.

Arkansas State at Oregon (o/u 67.5): You want tons of flash and style with just enough substance to get by? This is the game for you. Just as Saul Goodman is “a different type” of lawyer on Breaking Bad, these two teams will show off their own unique brands of football. There are going to be a lot of plays, a lot of points, and the smashmouth purists will be disgusted. This is an easy Over. I might even be tempted to parlay this with ASU +37. If you don’t get on the Gus Bus you Better Call Saul!

Need a few more? Here’s some more lines I like:

West Virginia (-25) over Marshall, Oklahoma (-30.5) over UTEP, Kentucky at Louisville Under 42