TCU at San Diego State

Classic contrarian play here. TCU has been steamrolling through play this season, disposing of Mountain West teams very easily. That will not continue so easily this Saturday night. They've been playing nearly flawless ball (no turnovers the last two weeks and ranked #1 in 1A ball with +17 turnover margin) and that doesn't continute forever. In fact, the one game in which they did not win the turnover battle, they lost! The Aztecs are improved and have played well at home if you throw out last weekend's humiliating loss to New Mexico. SDSU hammered BYU in San Diego earlier this year and have the running game to give TCU all they can handle here. Lynnel Hamilton will play in the NFL. Underdogs of 3.5 to 10 points off a straight up loss now facing an opponent off 4+ straight up wins are 45-10 (82%) over the last 5 seasons. The lines in these types of games simply get too inflated. Exacerbating this line inflation is the fact that SDSU lost by 23 points as a favorite last week and TCU won by 38 as a small favorite. TCU is a solid team this season and are lead by their QB Gunn who has been hobbled of late. If there is a game where they can stumble, this is the one. They are feeling good about themselves after the AFA win. SDSU was no doubt looking ahead to this game last week, and will come with their A effort this weekend after such a poor showing last week. High scoring road favorites scoring 28-34 PPG off a big offensive performance (37+ points) facing an average defensive team (21-28 PPG) are just 9-32 ATS since 1992. TCU will be looking ahead here to next week's very important tilt with CSU (the only team withe one loss in the MWC). San Diego State is the pick for five stars.