Vegas Sets Season Win Total Over/Under for Oregon at 8

For those who are outside the state of Nevada these betting numbers are for entertainment purposes only.  If you're lucky enough to live in Nevada or a state that allows gambling under the guise of daily fantasy sports then you can put your money where your mouth is.

Vegas Insider released the NCAA FB season win total over/under odds and sets Oregon's at 8.  This means that one has to pick the "over," meaning 9 wins or more, or the "under," 7 wins or less.

Below are the conference projections:

Arizona: 6

Arizona State: 5

California: 4

Colorado: 4.5

Oregon: 8

Oregon State: 3.5

Stanford: 8.5

UCLA: 8.5

USC: 7.5

Utah: 7.5

Washington: 9 (!!!)

Washington State: 7.5

Washington has been the next big thing in college football for, like, the last five years.

Keep in mind that these numbers are not necessarily a prediction.  The first goal for the smart guys setting the lines for the casino is to get people to place money.  Second, they want to have even money on each side, thus making their money off "the juice," which by virtue comes from paying out only $100 for every bet of $110.  If they're feeling very confident in a contrarian fashion they'll set a line that begs people to pick a certain way, like they did when Utah played at USC last year.

The 2016 opponents: Virginia is set at 4.5 and Nebraska is set at 8.5.

Last year, as you all know, Oregon won 9 games with a double overtime loss to Washington State, a really bad loss to Utah, and a loss to Michigan State that was one play away from being a win.  Based on the odds listed we can assume that Vegas believes that Oregon will beat UC-Davis, Virginia, Colorado, Cal, Oregon State, and Arizona State.  That means that there are three more games that Oregon needs to win in order to win an "over" bet.  (If the final win total is 8 the bet is a "push" and you get your money back, although it varies from casino to casino, in the state of Nevada.)  So pick three wins out of Nebraska, Washington, USC, Stanford, and Utah to win an over bet.

If I were to pick the over I would argue that Oregon had two near wins last year and were without good quarterback play for two of the losses.  I would also argue that the defense, if even average, gets two more wins easily last year.  Basically, Oregon underperformed last year and will return to the mean.  If I were to pick the under I would say that Oregon is not guaranteed good quarterback play after losing Adams, which appears to be a requirement for the team to function.  Also, Oregon had three wins that were within a single score, so last year's team lucked out a few more wins to get to 9.

There seems to be a significant amount of people, both writers and the smart guys in Vegas, that believe Oregon is trending down the further Oregon gets from Chip Kelly and Marcus Mariota.

I want to read your thoughts in the comments.