Betting Line: Ohio State -27.5 | O/U 52.5
Following Saturday’s 59-3 demolition of Kent State, No. 7 Ohio State will finally get into Big Ten play this weekend, and oddsmakers apparently don’t expect the increased competition in college football’s best conference to make things all that much more difficult for the Buckeyes.
Ohio State has opened as a 27.5-point favorite over the Illinois Fighting Illini ahead of Saturday’s 12 noon ET kickoff at Ohio Stadium, with the over/under sitting at 53.5 points according to our friends at FanDuel. That
means Vegas is essentially expecting something in the neighborhood of a 40-13 Buckeye victory.
Of course, if you have been putting your faith — and perhaps a few dollars — behind Ohio State so far this season, the Buckeyes have treated you fairly well. Despite the heartbreaking 24-23 loss to Texas, the Scarlet and Gray are still a perfect 3-0 against the spread. Ohio State covered comfortably in its 56-3 season-opening win over Ball State, got the emotionally unhelpful moral victory of covering as an underdog in Austin, and then covered the massive spread in the 59-3 win over Kent State.
The Buckeyes are also 2-1 against the over/under this season. The Ball State and Kent State games both went over, while the disastrous second half led to an under against UT.
Interestingly, Illinois has been almost the exact opposite against the spread. Bert… I mean Bret Bielema’s team enters Columbus at 2-1 straight up but 0-3 ATS, failing to cover against UAB, Duke, and Southern Illinois. However, if you have simply been betting on points whenever the Illini take the field, congratulations: All three of Illinois’ games have gone over the total.
The Buckeyes will enter the game as the No. 7 team in both the AP and Coaches Polls, despite winning by 56 as the sixth-ranked team in the country this past weekend. So, in two weeks, the Buckeyes lost by one point on the road to the now-top-ranked Longhorns and fell five spots, then kicked the snot out of Kent State and dropped another place.
However, Lane Kiffin’s LSU Tigers got the SEC benefit of the doubt and fell from No. 7 to No. 10 despite losing to then-No. 8 Ole Miss by eight. Make it make sense. Well, even if the Big Ten and the Buckeyes still don’t get no respect, at least it should give them another chip on their shoulder.
Turning back to Saturday’s Battle for the IlliBuck, history is decidedly on the Buckeyes’ side. Ohio State’s leads the all-time series 69-30-4, with the teams once again playing for the greatest wooden turtle trophy in all of college football. Ohio State has won 10 straight in the series, and Illinois hasn’t beaten the Buckeyes since stunning the No. 1-ranked Scarlet and Gray, 28-21, in Ohio Stadium in 2007… the last OSU game I attended as a fan.
The most recent meeting came last season in Champaign, when Ohio State won 34-16. The Buckeyes didn’t exactly light up the stat sheet, finishing with only 272 yards of total offense, but they led throughout. CJ Donaldson ran for two touchdowns, Bo Jackson added 47 rushing yards and a receiving score, and Jeremiah Smith caught a touchdown pass from Julian Sayin. Defensively, Ohio State held Illinois to 16 points while recording six tackles for loss, four sacks, and a Payton Pierce interception. It would be nice to repeat the defensive numbers, but get a little bit more from the offense this weekend.
The analytics generally agree that Ohio State should win handily, although perhaps not quite as large as the sportsbooks suggest.
SP+, the gold-standard college football analytics model, currently projects Ohio State at 29.2 and Illinois at 7.2, meaning the Buckeyes are roughly 22 points better on a neutral field before accounting for home-field advantage. Add the fact that this game is being played in The Horseshoe, and the model’s underlying numbers point toward a margin in the mid-20s — very much in the neighborhood of the betting line, though slightly short of Ohio State covering 27.5.
So, my fellow Buckeye degenerates, how confident are you that Saturday looks more like Ball State and Kent State than Texas? If you think Ohio State is ready to begin conference play with another blowout, or if you think Bert’s boys can keep things respectable, don’t just tell us about it in the comments, check out the current odds and put your money where your mouth at FanDuel Sportsbook.
