If you witnessed the Tigers-on-Tigers crime that took place on a football field in Baton Rouge, La., on Saturday, you saw what should be an abnormality in the SEC this season.
Thus far, the early SEC games have produced stinkers (Georgia-Vanderbilt, Auburn-LSU, Georgia-South Carolina), while all of the late games have been instant classics — or at least fraught with drama.
RELATED: 10 best SEC team performances of Week 3
This week, the outcome of Florida-Kentucky and Ole Miss-Alabama was not decided until late in the fourth quarter. Expect more of the same as we look ahead to the Week 4 matchups: there are five SEC games, four of which opened in Vegas with a line between minus-1.5 and minus-4.5.
Essentially, most of the SEC matchups should produce high drama.
LSU travels to Syracuse in the marquee non-conference game Saturday, though the line is off as the injury situation among the Orange quarterbacks remained muddled as of Sunday evening.
The Texas A&M-Arkansas line is intriguing, as the Razorbacks opened up as a short favorite this summer when some institutions released early “games of the year.” Now the Aggies are favored by 4.5, and that number could climb.
This week’s lineup features just one game against an FCS school (Southern at Georgia). Those lines usually aren’t posted in Vegas sports books until Friday. But they’re worth monitoring, as Auburn taught us two weeks ago against Jacksonville State.
Here are the rest of the Week 4 lines. All 14 SEC teams play.
| Matchup | Kickoff Time* | Line# |
|---|---|---|
| UCF at South Carolina | noon | Gamecocks -12.5 |
| LSU at Syracuse | noon | Off |
| Southern at Georgia | noon | Off |
| Tennessee at Florida | 3:30 p.m. | Gators -3 |
| La.-Monroe at Alabama | 4 p.m. | Crimson Tide -39.5 |
| Vanderbilt at Ole Miss | 7 p.m. | Rebels -28 |
| Texas A&M vs. Arkansas | 7 p.m. | Aggies -4.5 |
| Mississippi State at Auburn | 7:30 p.m. | Tigers -4 |
| Missouri at Kentucky | 7:30 p.m. | Wildcats -1.5 |
*Based on Eastern Time Zone
#Based on Wynn LV lines as of 6 p.m. ET Sunday
The SEC finished just 2-4 ATS in non-conference games during Week 3 play, dropping to 12-14-1 for the season against the Vegas line.
The relative perception of SEC teams reached a tipping point following Week 1, when the SEC went 8-4-1 ATS against non-conference teams and set an all-time record with 10 teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25.
Missouri (0-3 ATS), Auburn (a combined -58 ATS the last two weeks) and Arkansas (back-to-back outright losses vs. Toledo and Texas Tech) are the main culprits.
Still, there are SEC teams performing to or beyond high expectations, even in Las Vegas. Ole Miss (3-0 ATS) is the only perfect team in Las Vegas. If you’ve bet $100 on the Rebels against the money line in Weeks 1-3, assuming odds of -110, you’ve made a profit of $272.73.
Then there’s LSU and Georgia, both of which beat the line against an SEC team by more than 16 points on Saturday and are entrenched in the top 10 of both major polls.
An itinerant journalist, Christopher has moved between states 11 times in seven years. Formally an injury-prone Division I 800-meter specialist, he now wanders the Rockies in search of high peaks.
