Rovell: Public Loves College Football Unders in Week 2

It's well known that the public loves to pound the over on total points in a game. It's just more fun to root for offense than defense.

But this weekend, in college football, the money is on the under more than most can ever remember.

Take Notre Dame-USF. Total points? 47.5. FanDuel has 76% of the money on the under and PointsBet has 80%.

BC-Duke. Total points? 51.5. FanDuel has 81% of the money on the under, DraftKings has 88%, while PointsBet has 90%.

"When we look down the slate of games each weekend, you'd be hard pressed to find more than a couple games where betting is heavily on the under," said PointsBet spokesman Patrick Eichner. "This week it seems to be the rule, not the exception."

Take, for example, the heaviest bet total for PointsBet: Wake Forest vs. NC State. There's 95% on the under of 52.5 points.

"I think there's the perception that guys are kind of rusty and the games will go slower," Eichner said.

The perception is, as is almost always with the public, mostly focused on what happened last week.

Out of the 20 games played, 13 hit the under, while only seven hit the over. More importantly, only one that hit the over would be considered a heavily bet game — Texas-UTEP.

Other heavily bet games — UNC-Syracuse, Notre Dame-Duke, Florida State-Georgia Tech and Miami-UAB all hit the under.

Despite this — obviously there are different matchups this week — the opening totals to the 20 games that will be played were an average of 57.2 points per game compared to an average of 51.7 points last week.

Different teams or are bookmakers not accounting enough for players being rusty. The public at least thinks it's the latter.