Penn State
vs.
Central Florida
College Football Pick
8/30/14
The first college football Saturday of the 2014-2015 season kicks off at 830 AM on August 30th. Oh, that’s on the East Coast. You folks out West can set your alarm clocks for 5:30 AM as Penn Sate and Central Florida tee it up in Dublin Ireland. Penn State is a -1 point favorite with a total of 48 at 5 dimes sportsbook.
Both of these squads face obstacles this season and have question marks. For the Nittany Lions, it’s a new coach in James Franklin. A new coach dealing with the sanctions levied against this Penn State team due to the Sandusky fiasco and many believe this is the year those sanctions will really hurt. A new coach means new schemes and new policies and a disruption of all things positive introduced by the previous regime. Always a tricky situation especially in Game 1.
Central Florida isn’t without their challenges. They face the daunting task of replacing super star QB Blake Bortles who was the 3rd overall pick in this year NFL draft. Bortles put this team on his back last year and was a major reason they went 12-1 and ended their season with a shootout win over #6 Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl. Quarterbacks like Bortles don’t come around very often and that will be evident this year with the Knights.
UCF beat Penn State last year 34-31 in a Game they led from start to finish by as many as 18 points at one point in the 3rd quarter. Of course, that was with Mr. Bortles behind center. All of the changes for both teams mentioned above make this Game difficult to handicap.
For the first week or two of the season, we tweak Our Score Prediction model in an attempt to make it more accurate for week 1. We’re forced to use last years stats though as the model is stat driven. We filter out results from early last year so that the prediction is a reflection of how teams finished, not how they started. We have to then take that prediction and decide how these changes that have taken place, will likely impact this Game.
That being said, Our model has the Scorefor this Game at 26-26. Now we have to decide which team will be hurt more by their losses and which team will be more likely to improve, if at all. Not an easy task considering what each team is dealing with.
Nothing strong here but losing Bortles will significantly hurt UCF. He was such an impact player and was the difference in so many of their wins the past two seasons. That’s solidified by the Jaguars taking him 3rd overall in the NFL draft, the 1st quarterback chosen.
Penn State has their on hurdles to overcome, but they have the better overall talent in spite of the sanctions and they have the revenge angle working for them as well. This one figures to be close, but not having Bortles will be the difference here. Penn State -1