BYU is doing it again.
A trendy pick for a disappointing season after losing its starting quarterback from 2024’s impressive-but-fortunate 11-win campaign, the Cougars have put the college football world on notice with a 4-0 start, vaulting them to No. 23 in the latest AP Poll.
West Virginia is also doing it again, though that’s not a good thing.
The Mountaineers are in no man’s land in Year 1 of Stint 2 for Rich Rodriguez, but that was to be expected. Weird things happen in the Big 12, but when chaos is your only real hope for success in a season, it doesn’t bode well.
The bookmakers are expecting this to be one-way traffic, with BYU coming in as an 18.5-point favorite over the Mountaineers in Provo on Friday night.
The results have been all over the place for West Virginia through the first five weeks of the 2025 season.
The Mountaineers got upset by Ohio in Week 2, but they rebounded with a win over a feisty Pitt team in the Backyard Bowl seven days later. From there, they got blown out by Kansas and Utah, putting WVU at 0-2 in Big 12 play out of the gate.
No matter what side of the ball you’re looking at, West Virginia grades out as pedestrian at best. The Mountaineers rank 96th on offense and 71st on defense, per Bill Connelly’s SP+ metrics, which lands them as the 83rd-best team in the country, per Connelly.
In other words, West Virginia is on par with the likes of Utah State, UConn, and Western Kentucky.
BYU’s soft schedule makes it hard to tell just how good the Cougars truly are right now, but they’ve cleared every hurdle without much fuss. A trip to Colorado in Week 5 was the stiffest test BYU has faced thus far, and they got out of Boulder with a tight win, erasing a 14-3 deficit in the process.
In a few weeks, we may be looking to fade BYU as a smoke-and-mirrors team, but this matchup should set up well for them.
Freshman quarterback Bear Bachmeier has been terrific, and he should be able to put up some crooked numbers against West Virginia’s leaky defense, which will put pressure on the Mountaineers’ moribund offense to keep up.
I don’t see it happening.
The Play: BYU -18.5 (-110, FanDuel)
Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.