GMAC Bowl Mark's Free Pick College Football Central Michigan Chippewas-Troy Trojans: 1/6/10

Written by Mark | 05 January 2010

GMAC Bowl-College Football 1/6/10

Troy Trojans (9-3) (Sun Belt)-Central Michigan Chippewas (11-2) (ACC)

By Mark • Wednesday January 6th, 2009 7 PM EST
Line-Central Michigan -2

Troy is once again the undisputed king of the Sun Belt but they didn’t look like it after starting the year with two loss’s. They quickly regrouped to dominate the conference going undefeated along the way with a lone three point win over Arkansas State as their only real league test. The Trojans potent 3^rd ranked offense rolled to 481 yards and 33 points mostly through the arm of Levi Brown and his 3800+ yards and 22 touchdowns. Their running game was non eventful and Troy would be hard pressed to move the chains if they had to depend solely on their ground attack to move the chains. The biggest concern is a defense that wasn’t real good at stopping anything, allowing 420 yards which statistically has them near the bottom tier of college football. Troy wasn’t real good at stopping the run and absolutely a non factor defending and the Sun Belt isn’t loaded with offense’s that struck fear in anybody outside the conference.

The name Dan LeFevour and Central Michigan will be forever linked as he has single handedly made Chippewas football a household name. As I’ve said before, the only thing he doesn’t do is pass to himself. LeFevour leads CMU in rushing, passing and scoring and his 71% completion rate and 27/6 TD/INT ratio are phenomenal. With LeFevour at the helm, CMU are balanced and effective running or throwing, putting 33 on the board every week. Of course, Central Michigan is known for their potent offense but the fact is the Chips are one of the better defense’s around. They are 27^th in total yards a allowing just 327 yards and have been tough to run on but have been passed on at times. The only number that counts is on the scoreboard where they give up just 17 per which means they win a lot of games.

Troy is 1-4 against the spread in their past 5 non conference games and 8-2 against the number in their last 10 overall. CMU is 8-1-2 against the spread in their past 11 as a favorite of .5-3 points and long term are 25-9-2 against the number in the past 36 as a favorite.

There s little separating these teams as the MAC champions lock horns with the best the Sun Belt has to offer in Troy. I’ve seen both play 10 times each and I don’t think anyone would make a living betting against them. CMU is just too balanced on both sides of the ball and the Trojans defense can be moved on so I find it hard to go against them but a few more points and I might sing a different tune…