5 Bold bets for the 2024 college football season (including Texas A&M stunning the SEC)

Be honest, you love college football for the chaos.

Sure, Alabama, Clemson and Georgia win title after title is impressive, but that’s nothing compared to the rush of seeing an FCS team topple an FBS school or a no-name player becoming an overnight star.

So let’s embrace chaos and pick out five bold bets before the season that may seem silly now, but might look brilliant by the end of the year.

Texas A&M to win the SEC (+1400 BetMGM)

Well, I said these were going to be bold bets. Jimbo Fisher is out and Mike Elko is in and while it might take a while to determine what kind of hire the former Duke boss is, the Aggies’ schedule is an absolute godsend this year.

Texas A&M has four preseason ranked teams on its schedule (No. 7 Notre Dame, No. 11 Mizzou, No. 13 LSU, No. 4 Texas) with each matchup taking place in College Station.

The toughest road matchups are arguably at Florida and at Auburn. There is a direct path for the Aggies to make the SEC title game.

West Virginia to make the playoff (+1500 BetMGM)

A year ago, Neal Brown was among the most likely coaches to find himself unemployed before the end of the season. Now he’s got one the country’s biggest sleepers and a wardrobe that probably still reeks of Mayo.

In a Big 12 with title threats like Utah, Kansas, Kansas State and Oklahoma State taking up most of the oxygen in the title conversation, don’t discount a WVU team that could have a pretty solid resume by the end of the year. The Big 12 likely gets two teams into the College Football Playoff and with five ranked teams on the schedule, the Mountaineers could have a solid resume to present to the committee.

Big 12 Over 1.5 CFP teams (+110 DraftKings)

See above. The Big 12 is stacked this year, even after losing Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC. We know the conference champ is getting an automatic first-round bye, which means we need one of Utah, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Arizona or West Virginia to take care of business and finish without and horrible losses that would take it out of the race.

FCS over 6.5 wins vs FBS (-175 DraftKings)

We might hit the over by the end of Week 1.

Montana versus Missouri State, Sacramento State at San Jose State, North Dakota State at Colorado, Illinois State at Iowa are all prime opportunities for FCS teams to stun their FBS counterparts. And those are just the games were expecting will be good. That’s not even accounting for the surprises.

Seven wins feels really doable here. The FBS should be on alert.

Shedeur Sanders under 3050.5 pass yards (-114 FanDuel)

Sanders has surpassed this number in each season of his college career. But it won’t happen this year. Even in a Big 12 known for a lack of defense, Colorado has put the biggest target on it’s back of any four-win team in college football history. Which is to say everyone wants to make life miserable for Deion Sanders & Co. Call them haters or non-believers, but there’s no question it’s personal.

The other side of this bet is that we don’t really know how good the offense is going to look beyond Travis Hunter and if Sanders doesn’t have other reliable targets — or misses any time — this under is going to look like a lock.