Baylor Opens as 1.5-Point Favorite over #19 BYU; Line Now Bears -4.5

Yesterday at the game, I told someone that I thought the spread for Saturday’s Homecoming game could be as high as BYU -10 given that the Cougars were undefeated and looked like a top-10 team. One dominant Bears win coupled with a BYU loss to Boise State (still not a state, by the way) later, and VegasInsider.com has the spread as Baylor -1.5. Even accounting for the typical 3-point swing toward the home team, that is far more favorable to Baylor than I expected. One book even has the line as high as Baylor -4. Also of note—the game has been officially set for ESPN where before it was possibly on ESPN or ESPN2.

Unfortunately, whether because of yesterday’s loss by BYU or last week’s loss by Baylor (and the fact that we are now unranked as of today’s AP and Coaches’ Polls), ESPN’s College GameDay decided that they would go back to Athens, Georgia for the UGA-UK game on Saturday. This is despite having been there last week for UGA-Arkansas, and there being an extremely compelling alternative in Cincinnati-UCF where you could get the first G5 team ever ranked in the top 4 of a major poll (Cincinnati, #3 this week) and a matchup of two G5 teams about to become P5 teams when they join the Big 12. But why would anyone want to see that? Instead we can just watch 24.5-point favorite Georgia beat the brakes off a Kentucky team coming off wins over a LSU team that is about to fire their coach, unranked UF, unranked Missouri, unranked South Carolina, and a 5-point thriller over Tennessee ... Chattanooga.

Anyway, we’ll keep an eye on this line going forward for Baylor-BYU! The O/U is currently 47.5.

UPDATE: The line quickly moved to Baylor -4.5, where it is now. As pointed out in the comments, SP+ would have Baylor somewhere around a 7-point favorite, but I didn’t expect public perception to go that direction (and thus influence lines). This early is probably sharps and books rather than the general public, though.