Thursday, February 9th, 2012
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish off their impressive home victory against Nevada will hit the highway to face the Michigan Wolverines in a college football contest on Saturday afternoon. Kickoff time in Michigan is scheduled for 3:30PM Eastern Time with regional television coverage provided by ABC Television. The LVSC college football odds makers have set the opening point spread in this contest and the road team Notre Dame Fighting Irish opened as 5 ½ point favorites. The early money from the college football betting public has come in on the underdog as the Notre Dame Fighting Irish are currently 3 point favorites. College football money line bettors can make a play on the favored Notre Dame Fighting Irish at –155 with the Michigan Wolverines bringing back +135 to win straight up without the point spread factoring in the NFL bet.
Both teams are coming off good wins and Charlie Weiss and Rich Rodriguez can breathe a bit of a sigh of relief with a good showing in week 1. The Michigan defense is much better than the Nevada defense so the Notre Dame Fighting Irish will be tested in protecting quarterback Jimmy Clausen. Clausen has the benefit of throwing the football to experienced wide outs in Golden Tate and Michael Floyd who run good routes and force defenses to stretch the field. Clausen was 15-18 for 315 yards and 4 touchdowns and no interceptions against a Nevada defense, which is about as worse as the Hawaii defense that the Notre Dame Fighting Irish faced at the Hawaii Bowl and pounded. So this game becomes a test for the Irish as they step up in competition after beating two poor defenses from the WAC conference. On the Michigan side the team stuffed the run as Western Michigan rushed for only 38 yards last week. Freshman quarterback Tate Forcier has been named as the starter in this game and is coming off a game where he went 13-20 for 179 yards 3 touchdowns and no interceptions a week ago. Michigan accumulated 439 yards of total offense last week with 242 coming on the ground. The biggest difference I saw in the Wolverines after last week’s performances is the team looks a step faster this year. That must be credited with Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez’ conditioning that caused some discontent from the detractors of hard work at summer practice that spoke anonymously to the media.
For the Latest CFB Odds Please Visit our CFB Odds Page
CFB Trend: The underdog is 8-2 ATS in their past 10 meetings
The Wagerline consensus has 51.3% of the CFB bettors on Notre Dame -3
The Wagerline consensus has 56.3% of the CFB bettors playing over 48
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