2005 Colorado Buffalos Handicapping Review

 

By Tom Wilkinson

 

Few college football programs were more deserving of the grief suffered by the Colorado Buffaloes during the 2004 off-season. This has been a renegade outfit since the days of Bill McCartney and a full reckoning was well past due. Head coach Gary Barnett was “suspended” for much of the off-season and spring drills due to an avalanche of misconduct charges hurled at this program that has lived on the wrong side of the law for much of the past twenty years. With all of the off-season turmoil, however, the fact that Colorado still had a lot of talented athletes often got lost in the conversation, and online sports betting blogs, for that matter. In a perverse way, Colorado’s sports handicapping value would actually increase in direct proportion to the negative stories about its program.

The Buffs opened their season as 4.5-point chalks against Colorado State and eked out a 27-24 win. In their next game at the Seattle Seahawks home stadium against Washington State, the Buffs pulled off a mild 20-12 upset win as 2.5-point dogs. They followed that with a 52-21 home win over North Texas as 20.5-poijnt chalks to improve to 2-1 against the odds. They then traveled to Missouri to take on a highly touted Tiger team that many expected to win the Big 12 North Division. Mizzou won 17-9 as 7.5-point chalks and, at this time, Colorado appeared to be a pretender rather than contender in the eyes of sports betting bloggers. The worst was yet to come, however, as in their homecoming game against Oklahoma State, Colorado was walloped 14-42 as 6-point dogs and this prompted the media and many sports betting bloggers to completely write off the Buffs, who now stood at 3-2 straight up and 2-3 against the odds. A 19-14 win as 10.5-point home chalks against Iowa State hardly made a difference at all in sports betting opinions.

Colorado’s next game was at Texas A&M as the resurgent Aggies were installed as 19-point chalks but barely escaped with a 29-26 win. Colorado hit rock bottom in their next game, a 7-31 home loss to Texas as 14-point dogs to now stand at 3-4 both straight up and against the odds. Incredibly enough, with their sports handicapping appeal completely shot, CU went on a three game winning streak both straight up and against the line to end up in the Big 12 title game, which they lost 3-42 to Oklahoma as 22-point dogs. CU won the Houston Bowl 33-28 as 3.5-point chalks over UTEP to end up getting the cash in 4 of their final 5 games, proving to be an excellent sports betting value after being written off by the masses.