Bowling Green peaked when they won the MAC Championship for the first time in 21 years and their head coach Dave Clawson decided to move onto the Wake Forest job as their special teams coach takes over in the interim with no real head coaching experience. That's huge for a team going bowling coming off a conference championship, and Bowling Green is just 1-3-1 ATS in their last 5 bowl games and they have 7 straight losses to major conference teams including Indiana 42-10 and Miss State 20-21 this year. The MAC is over rated and we saw it first hand with Bowling Green dominating Northern Illinois who went undefeated. The MAC was 1-16 this year vs. top 40 teams and just 6-47 vs. the top 75 teams. They face a Pitt team ranked 51st and the match up really intrigues me and I think we catch a ton of value here at +5.
Pittsburgh had another 6-6 team, but they have their head coach and they are gaining traction. A 7-6 season would be great for the program since they moved to the ACC. The ACC had the 5th toughest schedule among conferences while the MAC was last and is already 0-2 SU and ATS in bowl games this season as both Buffalo and Ohio got waxed in their bowl games. Pitt came up with some big wins this year beating Syracuse on the road which is not easy to do and they also beat Duke and Notre Dame so it's not like Pitt is completely helpless. They also have the best players on offense and defense in DT Aaron Donald who won several awards along with WR Devin Street. Bowling Grene is known mostly for their defense, but they have had a balanced attack on offense, but a closer look and you can see why. Their offense faced just 1 opponent that was top 60 in both passing and rushing yards allowed and they put up 20 points, Pitt will be the 2nd. I think Bowling Green will have some issues on defense stopping the physical runners of Pitt who did not have a lot of success this year, but look for Tom Savage to open this game up early with his arm connecting with Devin Street and the all American freshmen Tyler Boyd.
