New Mexico State is the biggest underdog of the college football season to date, catching 52 points in Saturday’s tester at Alabama.
Some bettors have backed the Aggies to win straight up.
New Mexico State is 75-1 to pull an outright upset of Alabama at sportsbook operator WynnBet, where 29 money-line bets had been placed on the Aggies as of Friday afternoon. Most of the wagers-or donations, as some might call them-are small in stature, around $25, a WynnBet spokesperson told ESPN on Saturday.
The Crimson Tide were listed as -100,000 favorites to win outright, meaning bettors would need to put $1,000 to win a net $1. More than 200 bets, totaling thousands of dollars, had been staked on Alabama to get past the 1-8 Aggies at WynnBet.
The Tide are such big favorites that some bookmaking computer systems couldn’t handle it. The trading team for sportsbook PointsBet said they couldn’t offer any odds shorter than -10,000 “without running into any displays issues.” FanDuel was offering the Crimson Tide at -10,000, but only paying out 22-1 on the Aggies. Approximately 56% of the money-line bets-and 95% of the dollars wagered–on the game’s winner was on Alabama at FanDuel.
Veteran Las Vegas bookmaker Chris Andrews, in his book “Then one day …: 40 Years of Bookmaking in Nevada,” tells a story of a bettor, who routinely wagered $100,000 on money-line parlays, often featuring big favorites. The bettor avoided any big losses for a long time, but eventually got burned by an upset.
“He would beat me out of like $2,000, $3,000,” Andrews, now sportsbook director at the South Point in Las Vegas, told ESPN on Friday, “but when we finally got him, he’ll never catch up.”
Andrews has Alabama at -21,000 and New Mexico State at +7,000 at the South Point and said he’s attracted bets on both teams.
Barring late line movement toward New Mexico State, this will be the eighth game since 2000 between two FBS teams with a spread of 50-plus, including in 2019 when the Aggies took on the Crimson Tide as 55-point underdogs and lost 62-10.
Alabama is 14-0 as a favorite of 45 points or more under coach Nick Saban., but just 4-10 against the spread in those games, according to ESPN Stats and Information.