Ad Disclosure
Temple Laying 21 Points to Charlotte Must Mean the 49ers are Truly an Affront to College Football
Published:
This weekend line jumped off the page and slapped me across the face:
93% chance for the Owls to win. That amounts to a -21 home spread for a Temple team that is 1-3 at the Linc with losses to Army and UConn.
Just how bad are the Charlotte 49ers?
Well, they’re 0-6 with losses to The Citadel (FCS team), Ole Miss, Appalachian State, Louisiana, Memphis, and North Texas. They’ve lost their last three games by 40, 41, and 27 points, so they haven’t kept those games particularly close. They run for 101 yards per game and throw for 186 on average while ranking dead last in FBS with a -26.2 point-per-game differential and a -10 turnover margin. Additionally, they rank 3rd-worst in scoring defense (42.2 PPG) and 7th-worst in total defense (466.8 YPG).
They are not a good team.
Temple, meantime, went down to Tampa two weeks ago and knocked off a 4-0 USF team that is now 4-2 after losing to UTSA. Then the Owls lost a disappointing home game to UConn that would have seen them claw back to 3-3 and put them in great position for bowl eligibility.
As for the 21-point spread, Temple has covered that once this season, beating FCS Rhode Island and their backup QB by 24 points at Lincoln Financial Field in the season opener. Temple laying three touchdowns to anyone is hard to wrap your head around, considering the amount of nailbiting rock fights they’ve been in over these last two seasons. But Charlotte is that bad, and if you believe the 49ers to be an affront to college football, then get a Kalshi promo code and go for it.
Otherwise, this might be a live line game, or one we avoid. Maybe we play PA casino apps and NJ casino apps while keeping this one at arm’s length.
For what’s it worth, Temple gets to 3-4 with a win on Saturday. To become bowl eligible, they would need to then win three of their final five games against:
- a 3-3 ECU team on the road
- a 2-3 Navy team on the road
- 4-3 UAB at home
- 1-5 Rice at home
- 5-1 Memphis on the road
There’s a path there. ECU and Navy turned out to be nothing special this year. But UConn, Toledo, and Army were disappointments. They needed to win 2 of those 3 games and went 0-3 to really put themselves in a tough situation.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com