My 2013 BBVA Compass Bowl picks between the Ole Miss Rebels and the Pittsburgh Panthers are all set and ready to go here at Cappers Info. The BBVA Compass Bowl kickoff starts at 1:00 p.m. ET at Legion Field in Birmingham, AL, and I’m going to be your expert college football handicapper that points you towards the winning bet for the Ole Miss vs. Pittsburgh game.
2013 BBVA Compass Bowl
Pittsburgh Panthers (6-6, 7-4-1 ATS) +3.5
Ole Miss Rebels (6-6, 9-3 ATS) -3.5
Over/Under 54
It’s interesting to think that all of the action has been on the ‘under’ in this game publically, as that’s generally a sign that offenses are being underrated. That makes matters especially unclear when the ‘total’ continues to rise. This is as sharp of an ‘over’ play as you’ll find in a bowl game, and I’m here to take the fullest advantage of it in a game that many think is going to be nothing but a snoozer that you’ll want to sleep through before getting ready for the NFL playoff games.
The Panthers aren’t as god awful of an offensive team as you would figure. The club did put up 400.4 yards per game and 27.4 points per game this year, and for as much as the team hates to be in Birmingham for the Compass Bowl for the third straight season, it does have to be out for some payback after scoring just six last year in this game against a significantly lesser SMU Mustangs outfit. Remember that the Panthers did score 26 on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, something that hardly anyone has been able to do this year, and there were 27 put up on both the Rutgers Scarlet Knights and the South Florida Bulls to end the campaign. It’s not a hapless team by any stretch of the imagination.
But what really pushes this one past the number for me is the exuberance that the Rebels are going to be playing with. This isn’t your average 6-6 team this year. This is a team that went through the wars together and clearly improved against a brutally tough schedule as the campaign went on. QB Bo Wallace dropped 41 on the Mississippi State Bulldogs, 35 on the LSU Tigers, and 26 on the Vanderbilt Commodores down the stretch, and there is no reason to think that there won’t be at least 30 put up in this game, especially with as well as Wallace has played at the end of his sophomore season. It wasn’t a mistake this year that the Rebs scored 30.9 points per game, and this offense, against the tough SEC, did average 426.8 total yards per game. That’s enough for me to think that this is an ‘over’ game waiting to happen in spite of the perceived notion that the Panthers can’t score.
Pittsburgh vs. Ole Miss Picks & Tips: Over 54
