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Free Bowl Picks - August 29, 2008The College Football season is here! We have four picks in the Thursday and Friday games below. We'll send out our Saturday plays early Saturday morning. We also finish our Top 25 countdown...  Today's NCAA Football Picks: After a 1-4 start last season Buffalo finished strong producing a winning record in their last seven games. Overall the Bulls went 5-3 in the MAC and outgained conference opponents by over 70 yards per game. Those five MAC victories is just three less than they won total in the prior seven years. We think they are headed in the right direction. The good news for the Bulls is the team that finished strong a year ago returns 18 starters this season. This will be the best Bulls team ever since joining the ranks of D-1A. UTEP started off strong last year, going 4-2 out of the gate, but then the wheels fell off and they finished losing their last six for a disappointing 4-8 season. The Miners lost a lot to graduation, returning just 11 starters from a year ago. They were outgained in nine of their twelve games last year and with so many departures, it is hard to see this team competitive early on this year. On the road vs a good and experienced Buffalo team, we expect the young Miners to struggle. UTEP is just 7-18 ATS on the road in their last 25 in the first month of the season. The Bills take their home opener. Game: Vanderbilt at Miami Ohio (Thursday 8/28 7:30 PM Eastern) Pick: 4 units on Game Total UNDER 41 -110 Vanderbilt could find themselves winless this season in the tough SEC. This is a team with just nine seniors on their entire squad! The offense is returning only three starters, so game one on the road may be a difficult place to expect an inexperienced offense to produce points. The Commodores went 9-2 UNDER last season. Miami, Ohio returns eight players from their offense from '07, but is that a good thing? This is a bad offense that scored 14 or less points in six games, and 17 or less in eight games. Their total against BCS teams? Vandy (13), Cincinnati (10) and Colorado (0) amounted to just 7.8 points per game on average. They combined for just 126 rushing yards against these teams and suffered a combined 10 sacks vs Cincinnati and Vanderbilt. The offense was overmatched all season, and we don't expect to see much improvement, especially versus a BCS team against whom they really struggled last season. We like the UNDER in this one. Game: North Carolina State at South Carolina (Thursday 8/28 8:00 PM Eastern) Pick: 3 units on Game Total UNDER 45.5 -110 South Carolina really crumbled last season. Sure, they looked like the surprise team in the SEC when they jumped out to a 6-1 mark, reaching a #6 national ranking. But they then went on to lose five straight to finish 6-6 and did not even get a Bowl bid. Now that's a fall from grace! This may be the best Steve Spurrier team yet in Columbia. The problem is that it may not be good enough given the unreal SEC competition. The Gamecocks are returning 10 starters from a defense that was very solid last season. They should be even better this season. Their biggest problem will be finding a QB to emerge to give the offense viability. We expect the offense to struggle early. This will be a rebuilding year at NC State. They lost 47% of their letterman from a year ago, ranking them in the top 10 in the country in that category. They do return their QB, but they graduated all three wide receivers so expect some chemistry issues early on. The Gamecocks are on a 13-4 UNDER run in the first two weeks of the season. We like this one to go UNDER the total. Game: Temple at Army (Friday 8/29 7:00 PM Eastern) Pick: 3 units on Game Total UNDER 43.5 -110 Army has not fielded a good team in years, but at least this year's version will face a much softer schedule than normal. But with only eight starters returning from last year's 3-9 team, the results may not be much different. Over the past two seasons Army has scored 17 points or less in 16 of their 24 games, and have even less offense returning this season. Temple returns all 22 starters this season, and as a result should be a much improved team overall. It should be a superb season for them. The problem for this team is they still have a long way to go offensively, as they topped the 24 point mark just once last season. Overall in the three years these 22 players have been together, Temple has scored over 24 points just three times in 36 games. With Army young and inexperienced on offense, and Temple not a big offensive threat, we will stick to the UNDER here. Results: 3-1 NCAA Football Picks Resources:
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