Syracuse vs Minnesota
Syracuse +10½ -107 over Minnesota

Posted at 11:45 AM EST odds are subject to change.

Pinnacle +10½ -110 BET365 +10½ -110 SportsInteraction +10½ -107 888Sport +10½ -110

Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl

Yankee Stadium, Bronx, NY

Syracuse +10½ -107 over Minnesota

2:00 PM EST. Mr. Row the Boat was hired to bring back glory to this once proud Minnesota program but hasn’t come close to reaching those goals since he arrived in 2017. Instead, the Gophers have become as irrelevant as the Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl. This year, Minnesota’s best win came against a weak Wisconsin team in the final game of the year after the Badgers clinched a Bowl berth the week prior with a 15-14 win over Nebraska. The Gophers next best win was against whom? Northwestern? Western Illinois? Colorado (a team that lost by 50 every week)? The Gophers did not play Ohio State or Michigan. When they played Penn State, they lost 45-17. When they played Illinois they lost 26-14. When they played Purdue they lost by double digits in that one too.

Former players at the University of Minnesota called Fleck’s culture “a clown show with all his stupid sayings and boat oars all over the goddamn place”. His former boss, Jerry Kill had this to say about him, “Do I still root for the Gophers? I do. Do I enjoy him running up and down the sideline? No. Do I think that he’s about the players? No. He’s about himself. You can’t tell me. You’ve watched him. You listen to his interview, you think he thinks about the players?”

We have no idea what goes on inside the Gophers locker room but several players that have either graduated or left Minnesota had nothing good to say. One player even said that Fleck “threatened to take his scholarship away”. There is an old saying, “Where there is smoke, there is fire” and we have to apply that here. Going into a Bowl game, we want to get behind teams whose players will absolutely run through a wall for their coach. We don’t get that sense here.

The market is not very keen on the Orange and we understand why. Syracuse won’t have star RB Sean Tucker. He was the go-to-guy on the Orange. Syracuse’s offensive coordinator, Robert Anae, who is moving on to North Carolina State will also be absent. Syracuse has some opt-outs on the defensive line as well. Combine all of these negative talking points and the market will be heavily influenced to take Minnesota.

You’ll also read about how Gophers RB Mohamed Ibrahim is going to run through Syracuse all day and that the Orange will have no answer. That may be true but that is X’s and O’s, which we put very little emphasis on because it means jack. What’s more meaningful to us is that Minnesota, a team that has difficulty scoring 10 points on its best day is spotting inflated points to a team that is playing in its home state and that is being grossly disrespected here. It’s easy to get caught up in all the negativity the media is spewing out about Syracuse’s chances here. Thus, if you bet Minnesota, indeed you may cash your ticket but we promise you that you’re spotting inflated points due to the overreaction of all the factors mentioned above. That’s our prompt to move in.



Our Pick

Syracuse +10½ -107 (Risking 2.14 units - To Win: 2.00)