Football season is here again. I hope everybody has a great year! This season I’m junking my old star system ratings for units played. Most of my plays will be one unit, with an occasional two unit play for my best bets. I will also have a few half unit plays scattered in throughout the season.

I’ll be following the Big 12 this year. This will always be my first conference of choice when looking for playable games. Just keep in mind that this is now just a 10 team conference. So finding the good spots with fewer teams will be harder to do when we get into conference play. The conference is so wide open this year that I don’t really get the warm fuzzies about any of the teams. With the exception of TCU, we may have to put out an APB to find any defenses in this league. All of the top shelf D talent seems to have packed up and left the premises. Which makes capping this conference much more difficult.

This week I’m seeing many more games outside of the Big 12. Being the first week we’ve all had a chance for a long look at these first games. So I’ll be more all over the board in this first week.  I’m going to have all of my plays in by Friday evening for the rest of the season. But this week could be an exception since it is Labor Day weekend and the games go into Monday. Let’s get this party started.

North Texas -15 (-110) 1 Unit 

Rice +27 (-110) 1/2 Unit

LSU -4 (-110) 1 Unit

Nevada +21 (-110) 1 Unit

North Texas -15 (-110) 1 Unit

HC McCarney has been slowly building this team. And being in his third season is when most coaches that are worth their weight start showing their biggest results. I expect NT to be much stronger than last season. But fortunately the public most likely hasn’t caught onto to it yet. Afterall this is the same old North Texas isn’t it? Well, no not really. The players that McCarney is now recruiting are a step above what they’ve been able to get for the past 5 years since their last decent team in 2008. Plus much added depth in the 2 deep will keep them from fading as in years past. Idaho appears to be a team going the other direction. Paul Petrino took this stepping stone job to help revive the program. But they are at the very bottom of the FBS foodchain. He’s not going to get much done in this first year. Not with only 10 starters returning off of a 1-11 team. There is absolutely no talent on this team. And their poor offensive numbers show it. Okay, well their defensive numbers too. Petrino has gone the JUCO route to try and patch things up. But does low rated JUCO talent ever really work that well in a short period of time? Probably not in this first game. Not a good spot for Idaho going from their nice 70-80 degree temperatures to the high 90′s of Texas where this deep NT team has been praciticing in everyday. They should be able to wear them down and get the easy cover here.

Rice +27 (-110) 1/2 Unit

I’ve actually had this play in my pocket for the last couple of weeks. I thought it was good then with or without Johnny Football. And I still do. There has supposedly been no distractions with the Manziel incident. But distractions or not, he ain’t playing for a half, and a freshman is most likely going to come in and take his place. The over might be the best play here since two of Rice’s best defenders aren’t playing. But we are talking about a Rice team who is coming back in 2013 almost intact with 19 starters off a 7-6 team. The 6 losses might be a little deceiving since Rice reeled off 5 straight wins to end the season. So there is a lot of momentum coming in. Texas A&M lost some key starters off of their defensive unit. And if I was an Aggie fan this would be my biggest area of concern. Manziel can’t do his damage if the other team is moving the ball and he’s sitting on the bench. And Rice is definitely capable of moving the ball behind dual threat senior QB McHargue. I don’t see him upstaging JF once he comes into the game. But don’t be surprised if Rice reels off a few unanswered points in the first half before A&M gets it cranked up. I like for them to hang on and get this cover. It could even turn out to be an interesting game if A&M gets off to a slow start.

LSU -4 (-110) 1 Unit

This looks like it could be one of the more interesting games of the weekend. But I think in the end it’s going to be LSU’s depth and talent advantage that wins out. People are talking up the experience advantage that TCU has in this game. And I’ve even heard people say they have a veteran team because they bring back 16 starters. But this isn’t a veteran team. Last season was the first year for most of these players since most of them started as freshman and sophomores. So TCU is still a very young team. It won’t be as big of an advantage as people think since LSU is a major power reload type of team that rotates a lot of players in their games. So few players start the season completely green. TCU doesn’t have the luxury of doing this. Especially last year when all of these first year players were learning the game on the fly. So they can ill afford to lose anybody at this point of being in just their second year as a BCS team. What makes things worse for this game is they had 2 defensive starters quit the team this offseason, and Devonte Fields was suspended for the first two games. This was the biggest blow for the Frogs defense, and the one that I think will be the difference. I look for improvement out of the LSU offense this year under their excellent new OC Cam Cameron, and I think Mettenberger will also show improvement this season. There is a lot of controversy surrounding Jeremy Hill playing in this game. But I think it could actually be the passing game that decides it. TCU QB Pachall has been out of football for a year. And he hasn’t yet faced good legit BCS competition. I think he’ll be a little rusty in his first game back. I look for a very competitive game for 2 or 3 quarters. But my feeling here is that LSU wears them down in the end and wins a fairly close game but covers the number.