Ole Miss is the team that’s surging, while Texas is the team that’s struggling.
But it was the struggling team that was installed as the early favorite for next Saturday night’s SEC matchup in Austin. When the opening lines for Week 8 were revealed on Sunday by Circa Sports, the reeling Longhorns were a 3.5-point favorite with the opening over-under total set at 52.5 points.
The showdown will kick off at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC, so Texas will have a national TV, primetime stage to end its recent struggles. The Longhorns have gone from being the No. 1 team in the country just 2 weeks ago to the No. 19 team following shocking losses to unranked Oklahoma and Florida.
Those setbacks have Texas searching for answers at 4-2 overall and 1-2 in the SEC, but the oddsmakers are believing in the Longhorns to pull off a bounce-back win. Trying to get in the way of that narrative will be No. 7 Ole Miss, which is 5-1 overall and 3-1 in the SEC after blowing out Mizzou, 31-3, in Week 7.
The Week 8 matchup in Austin will feature 2 of the most-heralded quarterbacks in the SEC and the country, with Ole Miss’s Trinidad Chambliss facing off with Texas’s Arch Manning. But while Chambliss has been lighting it up lately, Manning has been going the other way, with those losses to the Sooners and Gators as proof.
Here is that Ole Miss-Texas line as well as all the Week 8 opening lines:
While the opening line has been set for the matchup in Austin, here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about Ole Miss’s chances to go to Texas and knock off the suddenly struggling Longhorns in Week 8:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
