Caleb Wilfinger
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Following a wild college football regular season, we’ve arrived at the most wonderful time of the year. Bowl season is here and with it comes plenty of games for college football fans to wager on over the course of the next few weeks. We’ve got a trio of games on tap on Thursday featuring both Power 5 and Group of 5 teams alike. These games might not be on everyone’s radar, but we can still win on them!
You can read all our college football predictions on Thursday’s games, but without any further ado, here’s my 3-leg NCAAF parlay with a potential payout of +1349 odds. Let’s take a look at each of the legs.
Rutgers -1.5 (-108)
SMU -10.5 (-102)
Arizona ML & Over 60.5 (+280)
NCAAF parlay odds: +1349
Odds available at FanDuel Sportsbook at the time of publishing
Rutgers Scarlet Knights -1.5 over Miami Hurricanes (-108)
We’re expecting plenty of rain and windy weather on Thursday, and that is probably more disruptive to the warm-weather Hurricanes than the local, ground-based Scarlet Knights. Additionally, while Miami will be missing 4 or 5 players on offense, including their starting quarterback and 5 or 6 guys on defense, Rutgers is missing a couple of players that aren’t much of significance. Add in the fact that this season was mostly a disappointment for Miami and I am not sure how much motivation and energy will be on their sideline. I’m not expecting much scoring at all in this one, and that also has me looking toward the Rutgers side given that Greg Schiano’s group is more comfortable keeping the ball on the ground and chewing up clock. Given all of these factors, I’ll be backing the State University of New Jersey in this one.
Read our full Rutgers vs Miami predictions
SMU Mustangs -10.5 (-102) over Boston College Eagles
These are two teams trending in completely different directions, as Boston College snuck into bowl season with 6 wins while SMU was dominant down the stretch en route to a championship in the AAC. Boston College deploys a run-heavy offensive attack built around dual-threat quarterback Thomas Castellanos. However, SMU’s defense is excellent against the run and Castellanos hasn’t thrived at all in passing situations (13 interceptions, 23 turnover-worthy plays) all season long. On the other side, the Mustangs are poised to have sustained success on the ground in this matchup, with Boston College ranking outside the top 100 in rush explosives allowed since Week 8. This also plays into backup quarterback Kevin Jennings’ strengths, as he offers further versatility to SMU’s ground game. I don’t trust Castellanos to keep things close, so let’s roll with SMU to win big.
Arizona Wildcats ML & Over 60.5 vs Oklahoma Sooners (+280)
We’re going to get a little crazy with the final leg of Thursday’s mega parlay. I like targeting games where I can correlate the game script as it relates to the total and the side, and that’s exactly what we have here with the Arizona Wildcats taking on the Oklahoma Sooners. This Arizona team is one that I’ve been backing all season long, particularly since the insertion of Noah Fifita at quarterback. Fifita was one of the most efficient quarterbacks in college football, putting up 23 touchdowns to just only 5 interceptions. He should be able to pick apart a Sooners defense that struggled against good passing attacks this season.
On the other side, Arizona’s defense also deserves credit, improving from outside the top 100 in most metrics in 2022 to inside the top 40 in 2023. Even without Dillon Gabriel at quarterback, five-star recruit Jackson Arnold will still have a majority of the Sooners offense playing in this game, including receiver Drake Stoops and Nic Anderson. I expect this to be a total barnburner, so let’s back Arizona in a high-scoring affair.
