As the offseason transitions to a season of projections and expectations for the 2021 season, over/under bets are among the most talked about during the college football summer.

ESPN’s Chris “Bear” Fallica recently visited with Ralph D. Russo of the Associated Press on his AP Top 25 College Football Podcast to discuss over/under bets that were interesting to him from an SEC perspective.

Fallica and Russo mentioned Tennessee as a team that would have a difficult time reaching a 7-5 record and topping the 6-win total they worked with from Draft Kings.

“I’m not sure how this Josh Heupel hire is going to work out,” Fallica said. “I actually thought UCF got the better end of that with bringing in Gus (Malzahn) and losing Heupel. Maybe it was a situation where UCF was going to start to decline anyway from that high level they’ve been at the past couple of years. Tennessee kind of had a purge from the program of a lot of key players. They’re in the SEC East with Florida and Georgia, who are definitely better than them. Kentucky is definitely better than them. I don’t know where the wins are coming from.”

He noted that Tennessee has to go 7-5 to beat the over/under total and he said he doesn’t mind a push.

“I don’t see 7-5 at all there for Tennessee,” he said. “If they go 6-6 and they push, that’s fine, but I think this is going to be a very trying, difficult Year 1 in Knoxville for Josh Heupel.”

In terms of an over, Fallica then said he has already played the over 6.5 for Kentucky.

“People just continue to doubt Mark Stoops and think that, ‘Oh, it’s an aberration, there’s no way he’s going to continue to have first-round pass rushers on defense every year, and he’s not going to continue winning bowl games,” Fallica said. “But somehow, ol’ Mark Stoops continued to do that.”

Fallica noted the first three and final three games of the season are key. That doesn’t include Tennessee at home, he said, “who knows what you’re going to get from Mississippi State this year,” and a game at South Carolina. Kentucky also gets Florida and LSU at home, he noted.

“I think seven wins is like bare minimum for Kentucky this year,” he said. “This is probably closer to an 8-4 type team. I’ve seen some rose-colored glass view points maybe thinking 10-2 might be a possibility for Kentucky. I think that’s an extreme.”

Russo admitted that he dabbled in Missouri for similar reasons as Kentucky.

“The SEC East has three teams that I think could be very bad this year,” he said.

Then Fallica followed up on Russo’s point about a four-win South Carolina over/under and added that the Gamecocks have a very difficult home schedule.

“You need to be able to win your home games and when you have three automatic losses at home, that’s hard,” he said.