Saturday, February 4th, 2012
The Mississippi Rebels representing the SEC conference will take on the Oklahoma St Cowboys from the Big 12 conference in the Cotton Bowl college football game on Saturday January 2nd. Kick off time in the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington Texas is scheduled for 2PM Eastern Time with national television coverage provided by Fox. The LVSC college football odds makers have set the opening point spread in this game and the Mississippi Rebels opened as a 2 ½ point favorite with the over under coming in at 51. The early money from the college football betting public has come in on the favorite, as the Mississippi Rebels are currently a 3-point favorite. The total has seen early betting towards the under, as the over under is currently lined at 50 ½ for the college football betting public to play into. College football money line gamblers can make a play on the favored Mississippi Rebels at –160 with the underdog Oklahoma St Cowboys returning +140 to win without the need for getting points.
Ole Miss enters the Cotton Bowl near Dallas with an 8-4 record on the regular season. The team is coming off an embarrassing 41-27 road loss to Mississippi St. The Bulldogs torched the good Rebels rush defense with 317 yards on the ground in victory. Mississippi was very sloppy in their rivalry game with 4 turnovers in the game. Junior quarterback Jevan Snead entered the season with accolades of an NFL prospect. That came to a screeching halt after his 7 of 21 passing performance at South Carolina in front of a national television audience. Snead hit on 54% of his passes with 20 touchdowns and an alarming 17 interceptions this season. Snead had another bad game to close out the season and it was a three-interception performance against Mississippi St. Snead had a three-interception game against Vanderbilt and a 4-interception performance against Alabama. Senior running back Dexter McCluster had a tremendous senior season. The talented back averaged 6.7 yards a carry on the season. He played well down the stretch with 282 yards rushing against Tennessee and 148 on the ground against LSU. The Rebels averaged 30 points a game on the year. Mississippi is ranked 5th in the SEC conference in total defense allowing 320 yards per game. Head coach Houston Nutt is in his second year coaching the team. He is leading the school to their second bowl game in his two years with the school. Nutt led the Mississippi Rebels to the 2008 Cotton Bowl defeating Texas Tech 47-34 as a 4-½ point underdog. Oklahoma St enters the Cotton Bowl with a 9-3 wining campaign during the regular season in 2009. The team is coming off a very disappointing 27-0 defeat to their in state rival the Oklahoma Sooners on November 28th. It was a huge loss for the Cowboys as industry pundits had the team penciled in for a BCS bowl game with a victory over Oklahoma in the season finale. It would be very hard to argue that point based on the fact that Iowa lost two of their last three games yet are headed to a BCS bowl game this season. It was a horrible loss by the Cowboys in their game against the Sooners as the team could only amass 62 yards rushing and a measly 47 through the air. Senior quarterback Zac Robinson completed 62% of his passes this season with 15 touchdowns and 8 interceptions. It was his lowest output in three years as Robinson passed for 23 touchdowns in 2007 and 25 in 2008. Robinson was very poor down the stretch in his past two games hitting only 9 of 21 for 90 yards against Texas Tech and 9 of 21 for 44 yards against Oklahoma. Robinson also struggled mightily in the teams 41-14 loss to Texas with 4 interceptions. The pattern on Robinson reveals very poor performances against good defensive teams. Running back Keith Toston performed very well this season with 1177 yards on 217 carries 11 touchdowns for a 5.4 yards a carry average. Defensively the Cowboys allow 21.8 points per game. The Cowboys are the second ranked rushing defense in the Big 12 conference allowing just 87 yards a game and only 2.8 yards per rush against average. Mike Gundy is in his fifth year as head coach with Oklahoma St. He has led the team to 4 bowl games in his 5 years with the school. Oklahoma St is 2-1 straight up and against the spread in the teams’ three bowl games with Gundy as head coach. The team lost their bowl game last season dropping a 42-31 decision to the Oregon Ducks as a 1-point underdog.
For the Latest CFB Odds Please Visit our CFB Odds Page
CFB Trend: Mississippi is 6-1 ATS in their past 7 bowl games
The Wagerline consensus has 53.8% of the CFB bettors on Mississippi –3
The Wagerline consensus has 64.7% of the CFB bettors playing over 50 1/2
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