An offshore bookmaker can seldom go wrong with the Penn State Nittany Lions, who are 7-0 SU and 5-1-1 ATS as favorites this season, and 0-1 SU in their one game so far as underdogs. PSU is back on the good graces of the best offshore gambling sites, which favor the Lions against rivals the Michigan State Spartans. Penn State’s heartbreaking 38-39 loss to Ohio State dealt PSU’s College Football Playoff chances a serious, though not fatal, blow.
- Date: November 4
- Time: 12:05 PM
- Venue: Spartan Stadium, East Lansing, MI
- Sportsbook Online Odds:
Penn State -8½ (-110) 48 (-110) -335
Michigan State +8½ (-110) 48 (-110) +275
Be Yourself and 5 Other Clichés
Neil Paine of FiveThirtyEight wrote a lengthy essay on how Penn State can, after placing No. 7 in the first College Football Playoff rankings of the 2017 season, still make the CFP. Was it any good? Don’t know; tl, dr. first of all, the Lions don’t care about CFP rankings. Second, other sources had much shorter but still pretty good pieces of advice. Land of 10’s Sean Keeler notes that teams with two losses don’t make the CFP, and suggests that PSU let Ohio State go. But it’s former Ohio State QB Kirk Herbstreit of all people who, rare for an ESPN analyst, makes the most sense; “The best thing Penn State can do is blow people out, because if you go by the numbers and look at the different comparisons, they will lose all of those arguments,” Herbstreit said. like when the Lions blew out the Spartans 45-12 last season, powered by Trace McSorley’s 376 yards and four touchdowns with no picks.
#TBT: Just under a year ago, Penn State clinched the B1G East with a 45-12 victory over Michigan State. #WeAre pic.twitter.com/cAWC1ZqvZs
— Penn State Football (@PennStateFball) November 2, 2017
PSU covered on that occasion the 11-point spread set by offshore bookmakers, but the Lions are 1-3 SU and ATS in its last 4 games against Michigan State.
You’re getting you’re ‘why’s’ mixed up with your ‘how’s’
Another piece of speculative fiction is entitled “Why Michigan State Football will defeat Penn State,” even though a more accurate title would have been “How Michigan State could defeat Penn State.” How, indeed. First and most obvious, stopping running back extraordinaire Saquon Barkley, which is exactly what the Buckeyes did. The Heisman hopeful opened the OSU game with a kick return for a touchdown but was held to 67 yards on 25 carries afterward. Then, the Spartans need starting QB Brian Lewerke to have an even better day than he did last Saturday, when he passed for 445 yards and four touchdowns – but threw a game-ending interception in triple overtime but also threw a game-losing interception in a 31-39 loss to Northwestern. Speaking of which, MSU and NU went well over the 40-point total, but then they also went to three overtimes. Offshore bookmakers have set the total for the Penn State-Michigan State game at 48 points. The Lions and the Spartans have combined for an average of 58.7 points per game in their last seven encounters, and the total has gone over in six of those matchups.