College Football Week 11 Best Bets: Saturday, November 14

The college football regular season has reached its final three weeks, and there’s still much to be decided when it comes to the College Football Playoff. Multiple games have postseason ramifications this weekend, including Wake Forest vs SMU, Texas vs LSU and Texas Tech vs Oklahoma State, among others. There are five ranked matchups in total, so you won’t want to miss any of the action.

Ahead of the Week 11 slate, here are my college football best bets. For more tips and analysis, don’t forget our CFB predictions for every FBS game this week and beyond. 

CFB Week 11 Best Bet: Oklahoma Sooners ML over Ole Miss Rebels (-130)

Odds widely available at the time of publishing. Playable to -150. 

With Ole Miss’ loss to Georgia, the Rebels’ College Football Playoff hopes are essentially nonexistent. They have three losses, and while wins over Louisville, LSU and Missouri look good, the blowout losses to Florida and Georgia don’t, and neither does the three-turnover performance at Texas. Now that the postseason is pretty much lost, I’m not sure what the motivation will be for this Rebels team on the road in Norman – where the Sooners are likely hungry to secure their first SEC home win this season. The Sooners suffocated the Gators last week in the Swamp, and OU’s offense looked decent without Ben Arbuckle calling plays. In fact, the Sooners converted 10 of their 18 third downs and possessed the ball for more than 37 minutes. 

Brent Venables defenses are always physical and efficient, and that’s exactly the case with the Sooners again this year despite a disappointing 5-4 record. After getting beat up by Georgia last week, essentially squashing their season, I can’t imagine the Rebels will be all that excited to go on the road and play against this unit. The Sooners make it hard to get into scoring range, they’ve been elite on third downs and they rank top 30 in efficiency over the last six weeks. They own a stark advantage over the Rebels in that regard considering Ole Miss is outside the top 70 in PPA per play allowed over the last six weeks, as well as 77th in yards per play and 81st in scoring this season. This should help what has been a mediocre Oklahoma offense find some footing. Conversely, Ole Miss is much better than Oklahoma offensively, but RB Kewan Lacy is out for the season, and QB Trinidad Chambliss has five picks and five turnover-worthy plays on the road this year. Expecting a very sloppy effort from Ole Miss, I’m taking Oklahoma to win this one outright. 

Check out Ricky Dimon’s college football touchdown bets for Week 11

CFB Week 11 Best Bet: Indiana Hoosiers -8.5 over USC Trojans (-112)

Odds available at bet365 at the time of publishing. Playable to -10 (-115).

Simply put, Lincoln Riley’s USC Trojans have been awful in cross-country conference games played in the central and eastern time zones, earning just one win and cover in nine such games from the beginning of the 2024 season until now. That one win was at Penn State last month. This isn’t going to be an easy spot, as this is now USC’s fourth time out to Wisconsin or further east, as well as the third time since that October 10 victory at Penn State. To be fair, there are two bye weeks mixed in there, but the Trojans went to Madison off a bye, and it didn’t really do much for them – they lost 24-7. 

The weather won’t help USC at all. While it’s not forecasted to be ugly, the temperature will be in the high 30s when the game ends, which is simply not Southern California weather. Given how physical Curt Cignetti’s teams can be, playing in the cold will absolutely be an advantage for the Hoosiers. 

Indiana has covered just one game out of nine. Contextually, they were at least 40-point favorites in the first three games of their season, and they failed to cover against Ohio State and Michigan by just two combined points, so I’m not going to hold that record against them. It doesn’t look good, but if anything, it might help create slight value on Indiana here. Not to mention, the Hoosiers will likely be motivated to win convincingly after the College Football Playoff committee dropped them five spots in the rankings despite being idle in Week 10. 

Get our full USC vs Indiana prediction, including this five-star best bet

CFB Week 11 Best Bet: Oklahoma State 1H team total over 20.5 vs Texas Tech (-105)

Odds available at bet365 at the time of publishing. Playable to -120. 

Texas Tech’s defense is a shell of itself. The Red Raiders are 110th in total defense this season, including third-worst in passing yards allowed per game (CFBStats). Over the last six weeks, the Red Raiders are 111th in pass success rate and 106th in pass explosiveness allowed outside of garbage time, which is certainly problematic when playing on the road against one of the best passing attacks in the country. With Drew Mestemaker leading the way, the Pokes are third nationally in passing yards per game, while they’re sixth in PPA per pass and third in pass success since Week 5. 

Over the last three weeks, the Red Raiders have surrendered 111 points to West Virginia, Arizona and Cincinnati. The Mountaineers and the Bearcats scored at least 24 first half points, while the Wildcats were at 17, though they scored 14 in the second quarter. Now facing an elite passing attack on the road and under the lights, it’s hard to imagine Texas Tech’s defense having much better luck early in this one – the Cowboys typically start fast. In fact, Oklahoma State has put up at least 21 first-half points in four of their last five games, in addition to each of their four home games. 

Both teams play at a top-20 pace, so there should be plenty of possessions in the first 30 minutes of this game. Given Texas Tech’s downward trend defensively and Oklahoma State’s consistency on the other side, I love being able to get the Pokes first half team total at anything under the key number of 21.