NCAAF - SEC Bets - Week 3

9/12/2024

Week 2 was wild across the landscape of college football, including within the SEC. The most shocking outcome of all came from outside the SEC, however, as #5 Notre Dame was taken down by Northern Illinois just one week after the Fighting Irish's impressive win at Texas A&M. Previously considered a near lock for the CFP with a relatively easy remaining schedule, Notre Dame's loss could potentially open up an additional playoff spot for one of the top contenders in the SEC by season's end.

Week 2's winners in the SEC were Texas, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Texas strolled into the Big House at noon Eastern on Saturday and delivered an absolute beatdown on #10 Michigan. Unless we find out later that Michigan is just a surprisingly bad team this year, the Longhorns have planted themselves as one of the best teams in the SEC in their inaugural season in their new conference.

Similarly, Tennessee routed #24 NC State at a neutral site in a game where the offense didn't appear to be at its best for a large portion. But the Vols' defense suffocated the Wolfpack and shut them down completely after the first drive of the game. NC State's lone touchdown in their 51-10 loss was a pick six when Nico Iamaleava's arm was hit as he threw in the opening quarter. Tennessee will get its first conference test at Oklahoma in a couple weeks, but they're firmly in the mix for a playoff spot at this point in the season.

South Carolina's massive win over Kentucky bleeds us over into our biggest losers of the week as well. The Gamecocks had a very shaky start to their season against Old Dominion, but after surviving and advancing in Week 1, they made Kentucky look horrible this past Saturday. The Wildcats could not move the ball through the air, amassing only 44 passing yards and throwing two picks. Kentucky QB Brock Vandagriff was practically sacked immediately after the ball was snapped on multiple occasions. South Carolina has a big test this week with LSU coming to town, but I'd be very worried if I were a Kentucky fan. And things won't get any easier in Week 3 when they host the #1 Georgia Bulldogs.

Kentucky was by far the biggest loser in Week 3 in my estimation, though there are a few other teams to mention. Arkansas held a 21-7 lead midway through the third quarter at #16 Oklahoma State, but managed to blow it and ended up losing in overtime. Additionally, Auburn and Mississippi State both fell to west coast teams Cal and Arizona State, respectively. All three of these teams will try to put these non-conference losses behind them and move forward into the conference schedule.

After two weeks of action, here are Ryne's SEC power rankings:

And now, the updated BSSR Expert Leaderboard:

Ryne has moved up to the overall leader after a very good week against the spread. Alex holds a lead on the money line, and Micah on the over/under. There is already some work to do early for a couple of us to stay in the mix, but the season is long.

Here's the Guest Picker Leaderboard after Week 2:

Tre has taken the overall lead after an above .500 performance, and he also leads both against the spread and on the over/under. As a note, the Guest Picker Leaderboard will be ranked by win percentages, since the number of games picked fluctuates from week to week.

For Week 3, our guest picker will be a little different than normal. This week's guest should theoretically be the most knowledgeable of all the guests we have in the lineup. It will be an excellent test as we continue to evolve into a machine learning world with artificial intelligence merging with human capability. Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok will be making the picks this week. I have asked Grok to make a final score prediction for each of the 13 games we're picking this week, and I translated its response into the format we need for this challenge. I'm excited to see how well it performs in relation to our talented human guests over the course of the season. And as a company that's on the forefront of technological innovation, Bucket Squad Sports Reports is thrilled to be a part of an experiment that is certain to shake the world of artificial intelligence to its core.

We're starting to get our toes a little deeper into the SEC season as we have three conference matchups in Week 3. #16 LSU travels to South Carolina, Texas A&M goes to the Swamp to take on Florida, and Kentucky hosts #1 Georgia. The only other rather notable matchups featuring SEC teams are #4 Alabama at Wisconsin and #6 Missouri vs. #24 Boston College. Both SEC teams in these games are double digit favorites, so we'll see how they perform against what should be inferior Power 4 opponents.

Here are our collective picks for each of the 13 games this week. Throw your money on the consensus picks and rake in the cash as you watch this Saturday.

#4 Alabama at Wisconsin (ALA -16.0, O/U 50.5)