2025 College Football Preseason Picks (Part 3)
Intro
So far in this series I have taken a look at the Power Two conferences and also the ACC and Big 12. Today I’ll take a look at my favorite preseason bets in the Mountain West and American.
Mountain West
Boise State to win the Mountain West -125 (5 units)
Boise State is the only team in the country that is minus money to win their conference. This still understates their dominance over the rest of the league. They are once again the clear best team in the G5- I give them about a 40% chance of making a return trip to the playoff.
The big news in Boise is the departure of Ashton Jeanty. The good news is that almost everyone else of note is back. They were able to hold on to QB Maddux Madsen despite heavy interest from other teams in the portal. Whoever replaces Jeanty will be running behind the best offensive line in the G5.
There is no team in the Mountain West who is remotely close to challenging the Broncos. UNLV was good last year, but lost HC Barry Odom to Purdue, and returns very little of their roster. Fresno State and Utah State were the third and fourth best teams in the league, and they both return little and are expected to take steps back.
Boise State travels to Notre Dame in early October. They will be significant favorites in every other game this year and their most likely outcome is another 11-1 season and another playoff bid.
New Mexico under 3.5 wins +110 (5 units)
There are around a dozen jobs in FBS where sustained success is impossible. This is one of them. Last year, former UVA coach Bronco Mendenhall made his return to coaching at New Mexico and led the Lobos to a 5-7 season. They were upset by Hawai’i to end the season, and would’ve made their first bowl in eight years if they had won that game. It looked like a promising start to the Mendenhall era.
Bad news for Lobos fans- Mendenhall left for Utah State after one year. QB Devon Dampier left for Utah (a signing that I really love- he was one of my favorite QBs in the portal). It’s not just Dampier- this roster was picked over clean in the portal. This year’s New Mexico squad ranks in the bottom five in the country in both my returning production and roster talent metrics.
I like the hire of former Idaho HC Jason Eck in the long term, but this is as complete a rebuild as you will ever see. The cupboard is completely bare and he has to build from scratch at one of the most woebegone programs in FBS. Such is life at New Mexico.
UNLV under 8.5 wins -125 (5 units)
The thesis behind this bet is pretty similar to the New Mexico bet. UNLV is a program that is historically awful but had a great season last year. They are also replacing their head coach (Barry Odom went to Purdue) and their QB, who graduated.
Odom came to UNLV two years ago and put together the two best years in program history. He went 20-8 in two years at a school that had never won more than eight games in a season and took them within a game of the playoff last year.
UNLV is going to be a lot better than New Mexico- hence why this win total is 8.5 and not 3.5. They have an exciting QB room with Alex Orji and Anthony Colandrea. They have a proven coach in Dan Mullen. But the rest of this team raises serious alarm bells for me. The recruiting classes that make up the core of this roster rank outside the top 100. Their lines are going to be abysmal.
Even in the NIL era, it takes several years to build a full roster. UNLV is not there yet, and I expect them to take a significant step back this year.
American
South Florida to win the American +1000 (1 unit)
South Florida has a winning tradition stretching back to their first days in FBS in the early 2000s. They finished ranked in 2016 and 2017. In 2018 they started 7-0 and were ranked in the AP Poll. From there, they went an amazing 8-43 in the next four and a half seasons.
Alex Golesh inherited this mess two years ago and has done a remarkable job of steadying the ship with back to back 7-6 seasons. I think this is the year they could truly break out. QB Byrum Brown was electric in 2023, but was injured for most of 2024 and clearly not 100% when he did take the field. He threw for 7.7 yards/attempt and ran for 800 yards in 2023 and now looks fully healthy. I expect him to be the best QB in the G5.
According to my measures, South Florida is near the top of the conference in overall roster talent, behind only Tulane and Memphis. When you add in an electric QB, I think that there’s great value at this price.