College Football Picks 25/9/10

I've picked three games this weekend using the following criteria:

* The kick off time has to be accessible to a UK audience
* The exchanges have markets available (not always the case)

Strangely, I've ended up with three games where the visiting team is the favourite - but I think that there are cases to be made for backing the home in two of them. I'm going to start with the game where I think the away team will win.

Alabama at Arkansas (Saturday 8:30pm, live on ESPN America)
Arkansas' record at home isn't that bad (four loses in the last 20) but home games against teams ranked in the Top 10 have been few and far between - three in the last five seasons and the Razorbacks have lost all of them by an average of 25.3 points. Those games include a 49-19 thrashing by Alabama in 2008.
Alabama have won their last three road games against teams ranked in the Top 20 (Arkansas are currently 10th in the Associated Press Poll) by a margin of 12 points so although this will be a cracking game it's highly unlikely that Arkansas will win it.
Recommendation: Back Alabama but keep an eye on the exchanges to find a decent price for laying Arkansas. 

Stanford at Notre Dame (Saturday 8:30pm)
One thing to keep in mind about this game: although Notre Dame have lost exactly half of their last ten home games, five of those defeats came in overtime so there's plenty of potential for this game to be a close one. Stanford haven't won three consecutive road games since the beginning of the 2005 season and haven't won in South Bend since 1992; Notre Dame have won the last five meetings between these two at home by an average of two touchdowns and although I don't think that will be the case, I can smell an upset here. Back Notre Dame by all means, but a I'd also recommend an insurance bet on Stanford just in case.

Keep An Eye On:
North Carolina at Rutgers (Saturday 8:30pm)
After losing two straight home games by the same score (24-30) the Tar Heels travel to New Jersey in search of their first win of the season. There's an immediate problem with this game, which is that these two programmes have only met each other twice and each time the home team has lost, so there really isn't enough data to take this forward.
Having said that...I think the bookies may have got this one arse backwards. So I'm recommending either taking no action or having a small punt on Rutgers: they've had three shut outs in their last five home games including one against a ranked opponent (23-0 v USF at the end of last season).