As the calendar pushes to May and rosters are set, college football regular-season win totals have been posted by DraftKings Sportsbooks and a few others.
Those win totals now include non-power conferences, including both FBS newcomers, North Dakota State and Sacramento State. Reshuffled conferences make for some interesting opening lines.
There’s more opportunity for those with eyes to see among the Group of 6 ranks for win total success.
Let’s open those eyes and pick out some early regular-season win total bets for our non-power conference friends. Here are my college football win totals and NCAAF picks for the Group of 6 ahead of the 2026 season.
North Texas Under 5.5 Wins (+135)
The only continuity between last year’s North Texas and this year’s Mean Green can be found in the name and logo.
Head coach Eric Morris and the rest of the coaching staff left for greener (less Green?) pastures, as did all of the major contributors to the team's 12-2 finish.
North Texas finished with the No. 1 Points Per Drive offense in all of FBS college football last year. Its leading passer, leading rusher, leading receiver, play-caller and every regular starter are gone.
The loss of Drew Mestemaker and Caleb Hawkins alone vacates 64 touchdowns. Yikes.
In comes Neal Brown — a hire I quite like — and along with him, defensive coordinator Matt Powledge.
Former West Virginia running back Jahiem White (who Brown recruited to Morgantown) transfers in but has to fully recover from an ACL injury suffered last September. If he’s healthy, White is a significant pickup.
UCF quarterback Tayven Jackson will be the starter this year. He showed some escapability in 11 starts last season (a 16.3% pressure-to-sack ratio is passable), but he’s just a 62% career completion passer with extremely limited dual-threat capabilities.
Brown will call the offense, which could be a positive considering he led WVU to two top-45 Points Per Drive finishes as the primary play-caller in 2023-24.
The schedule isn’t awful, but I project UNT to be an underdog in most of its games and an underdog of at least a touchdown six times.
With such a hard reset in a program that doesn’t have the best pedigree, I’ll take under 5.5 wins and bet against North Texas making a bowl game in 2026.
Pick: North Texas Under 5.5 Wins (+135)
Sacramento State Under 5.5 Wins (-135)
I’m old enough to remember June 2025, when the NCAA Division I Council voted against Sacramento State making the jump to the FBS.
In that year, Sac State lost its coaching staff and picked up a hefty $18-23 million bill just to join the MAC, which probably wasn't its first conference choice. The Mountain West chose to take Northern Illinois over Sac State for this year.
Rather than the Hornets becoming a plucky underdog with a chip on their shoulder, I see this as malfeasance from those advising the university. Administratively, this program is in a horrific spot.
Then the schedule gives them no breaks.
Sac State travels to Bowling Green, back home to face Ohio, then back out to Muncie, Indiana, to play Ball State in a three-week stretch. Later, it plays two games over 17 days, featuring flights to Mount Pleasant, Michigan, and Honolulu, Hawaii.
Nightmarish.
However, Sac State’s transition to FBS is a favorable one. It begins Week 0 at Eastern Michigan, then hosts Division I bottom-feeder Mississippi Valley State and UMass before October.
This team could be 3-2 (knocking on the door of 4-1 if it somehow unseats North Dakota State or Fresno State) and still miss a bowl.
Despite playing at Hawaii, Sac State plays just 12 games, not 13. It takes two bye weeks from Week 0-13 in what’s sure to be a long, long season.
The roster turns everyone over, though the Hornets did land a few power conference transfers and return 2024 starting quarterback Carson Conklin.
But unless this roster gels into a world-beater, this team is in for a hell of a ride. I don’t buy a second of it.
Pick: Sacramento State Under 5.5 Wins (-135)
Old Dominion Under 6.5 Wins (+190)
This is an alternate regular-season win total on Old Dominion.
The Monarchs are coming off their best season in a decade, but they lose prolific quarterback Colton Joseph (Wisconsin) and a dynamic play-caller in Kevin Decker (Memphis). Their leading rusher and receiver also need to be replaced.
Rising starter Quinn Henicle was a lot of fun in the bowl game and is one of the fastest QBs in the country, but he has an average arm and has some enormous shoes to fill.
Though the offense took all the headline losses, it was Blake Seiler’s defense that finished sixth in Points Per Drive allowed.
His defense didn’t allow 20 points after Halloween, held eight opponents to 10 points or less, and even kept Indiana to 27 — a feat accomplished only by defenses like Iowa, Ohio State and Miami.
Head coach Ricky Rahne is the king of .500 — he’s 30-33 during his tenure at ODU with a bowl game every other year and enough one-score finishes to make your head spin.
I can count three games I’m confident ODU will be favored in (Norfolk State, Georgia State, Southern Miss) and a handful of other toss-ups.
It’s probably looking at a 1-3 start with early games against Virginia Tech, East Carolina and James Madison. From there, ODU would need to find six wins with five road games and just one bye week.
The 2025 season will forever be etched in Old Dominion lore.
But I’m betting on regression to the program mean after an anomalous season and so much lost production (114th in Bill Connelly’s returning production).
Even if ODU makes a bowl game at 6-6, this alt number wins.
Pick: Old Dominion Under 6.5 Wins (+190)
