Week 2 college football odds, storylines: Best bets for the 5 biggest games, including Ohio State at Texas

College football almost kept the utter mayhem to a minimum … … and then it threw another second on the clock just for fun in Ann Arbor. Following that, the lone ranked-on-ranked game of the week was an instant classic, and the Monday night special in Tallahassee was delayed by a power outage in the stadium. It appears nothing will ever be normal again. For all the weirdness, an epic weekend for the SEC and a bad one against the number for the Big Ten, depending on the number you got, favorites covered in approximately two-thirds of the games. Movers It's Week 2, so we'll see reaction in the form of a power-rating change for almost all the teams in college football after their first game, but LSU's beatdown of Clemson, widely declared the burial of the Dabo Swinney Era, has sent LSU's rating up five points (ahead of this week's game with Louisiana Tech) and dropped Clemson's rating downward by around the same amount. Non-conference play is the time to make hay for the top contenders in the Group of Six, and Memphis consolidated its Week 0 win over UNLV by beating Arkansas State ahead of a significant showdown this week. Speaking of, for the second time in three years, we wonder aloud if you can make a positive move in a loss. Boise State going toe-to-toe with Oregon in Eugene (like it did two years ago with Ashton Jeanty) was surprising relative to the 24.5-point spread, but the Broncos sending an early message that they'll again be a problem in the G6 didn't exactly shake up the college football world. Shakers Western Michigan should be in this section with a bullet, but, instead, its life-long story will end in a very legitimate complaint. Strangely, a high-profile loss should actually help the Mustangs' case for the College Football Playoff if they run the table and defend their MAC title. Over at THE WINDOW, we've made a long-shot bet on the premise that even "bad" publicity is good publicity for Western Michigan. The phantom second added to the end of the game, and subsequent Hail Mary mess in Ann Arbor, actually underscores how few outright upsets there were to shake things up in Week 1. Among the Power Four versus Group of Six matchups, Tulsa pulled off the biggest upset, stunning new-look Oklahoma State, just as it did in Stillwater a year earlier in a perfect example of how our offseason outliers profile can translate into betting opportunity. Betting the big games for Week 2 This is the space for the big games of the week. Until teams take a loss or two, you never know what early-season game is going to end up mattering more than we initially thought. We still have very few in-season data points to go off, but there's enough market reaction (or lack thereof) to lead us to one side or another for the best games of Week 2. No. 10 Oklahoma (-5.5, 43.5) at No. 16 Michigan The biggest battle bettors face in Week 2 (CFB or NFL) is trying to parse-out what is real and what is fake after one game. Michigan came into the season as a short favorite for this showdown in Ann Arbor, but after a performance by Bryce Underwood that has the Michigan Men (and Women) up in arms, the line flipped to as high as Oklahoma -6. I'm the first to hold my nose and fire on the stinky underdog, but this wasn't the first game of Underwood's career. By comparison, on Sunday night, Louisville QB Lincoln Kienholz looked shook for the first half of the first start of his career against Ole Miss, only to light it up in the second half. Underwood has a full season under his belt, and yet had no answers for Western Michigan. The discourse slamming Underwood and Michigan does have tinges of disrespect for a defending conference champion, but if Michigan came into the season with an estimated power rating of around 75/100 nationally, the new spread implies the Wolverines are more like a 65/100. A Big Ten comparable at that rating would be Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. Why shouldn't our subjective power ratings have Michigan lumped in with that group? Mix in that we're higher on Oklahoma than most nationally, with a matchup that pits Underwood against Brent Venables' defense, and there's more than enough reason to think this line could very well be higher. Bet: Oklahoma -5.5 Arizona State at No. 8 Texas A&M (-14.5, 51.5) Honestly, this could have been any number of mid-level non-conference matchups, but Texas A&M is the next-highest ranked team to be taking on another Power Four team — and one that might be underrated. Last season didn't completely fall apart when Sam Leavitt was lost for the season, and that's a testament to Kenny Dillingham and the Arizona State staff, keeping the team competitive with Blake Sims at the helm. The Sun Devils don't get to hand-pick whomever they want for quarterback in the portal, but grabbing a one-time SEC QB in Cutter Boley from Kentucky is something. We won't take too much from a 70-7 win over Morgan State, in the same way the Aggies' 50-0 win over Missouri State doesn't make a mark, but Boley operating the offense well right from the start is a decent sign that ASU can do much better than the Bears' 67 total yards against A&M. The Sun Devils come into the season with a market rating of 64/100, and though their 2024 high point of 72/100 could be too much to ask, a healthier team this season for Dillingham could get close, which translates to a shorter spread than we have here. Bet: Arizona State +14.5 Memphis at Boise State (-8.5, 54.5) We'll see what happens when this week's AP poll drops, but instead of gluing ourselves to Michigan as a ranked team, maybe we go ahead and rank these two, which are actually good? It's obviously early, but if you could put two G6 teams up against each other in a virtual playoff-before-the-playoff game this early in the season, it's Memphis and Boise State. The Broncos' loss to Oregon virtually evaporates with a win over Memphis (which already has a win over Mountain West favorite UNLV), and if the Tigers stroll into Boise and get a big resume win, they'll be the standard by which all G6 teams are measured. The problem for Memphis is that its two wins have bumped its market rating, but giving up 400-plus yards to Arkansas State after being outgained by UNLV suggests maybe it shouldn't move from a level that would have made this line over double-digits before the season. Meanwhile, the Broncos were stout on both sides of the line of scrimmage against a national title contender, and if we could redo the 24.5-point spread for Boise State-Oregon, trimming at least seven points would be in order. Some of that could be a downgrade to the Ducks, but any upgrade you want to put forth for the Broncos is commensurate with an increase in value for them as the favorite here. Bet: Boise State -8.5 No. 1 Ohio State at No. 5 Texas (-1.5, 48.5) Now we're cookin' with gas. Ranked matchups are few-and-far-between, but here comes a top-five banger. Arch Manning was not very good through the first two months of last season, so, with 20/20 hindsight, a close loss in Columbus isn't all that surprising, and Steve Sarkisian wasn't wrong when he said that Texas would have been included in the CFP if it had played a cupcake that week instead. The teams aren't the same as a year ago, but Manning's development is augmented by the weapons that Texas supplied him with in the offseason, and the venue change to Austin is helpful as well. Meanwhile, the Buckeyes defense that stymied Manning has seen more than a few key pieces head to the NFL, leaving that unit the greenest in this matchup. As the No. 1 team in the country, Ohio State's market rating is the highest in college football, but that's a nominal position at the moment, and the Longhorns could easily end up the better team. Considering the Buckeyes haven't won a road (or neutral) test on the road since their loaded team won the 2024 natty, we'll take the home side under a field on Saturday night. Bet: Texas -1.5 Iowa State at No. 22 Iowa (-13.5, 40.5) We've already made a bet on the Cy-Hawk in our preseason pass through the "Game of the Year" lookahead lines in August, so this is more about a check-in regarding whether we might get some value after each team played one game. Hand up: We don't. At least, not yet. Oddsmakers moved this from an offseason price of -12.5 to an opening line of -14, apparently thrilled with Iowa's shutout win over Northern Illinois, or nonplussed about Iowa State's 38-10 win over Southeast Missouri State, but we're here to make the case that neither of those games matter to the betting market. Since that opener, the line has drifted off the key number, below two touchdowns, so, by Saturday night we might be right back to where we were in August — thinking that the Cy-Hawk will be its usual sloppy, tightly played game. The same thing we've seen in every edition since an Iowa blowout in 2016 — the second game of Matt Campbell's first season. Bet: Iowa State +13.5