In the wonderful land of odds, the early dots for Penn State football’s season opener against Nevada are out.
As expected, Penn State is favored by an absurd amount.
Per DraftKings Sportsbook, Penn State is favored by 44.5 points.
This shouldn’t surprise anybody. Penn State comes into the season as the No. 2 team in the country, whereas Nevada went 3-10 last season.
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Penn State is known to put the hurting on lower-level division one programs. Last season, it pounded Kent State 56-0. The year before that, it beat Delaware 63-7 and UMass 63-0. The year before that, it beat Ohio 46-10.
This matchup should give coach James Franklin a chance to empty his bench.
Players who might not see much action in Big Ten play could get some reps against Nevada.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.If all goes according to plan, it might be a quick afternoon for starting QB Drew Allar. Frankly, something will have had to have gone wrong for Allar to play all four quarters. Assuming Penn State doesn’t need Allar for much more than a half, we’ll find out an update on a key position battle.
Franklin hasn’t announced who will be Allar’s backup between Ethan Grunkemeyer and Jaxson Smolik. He said earlier this month that the decision could be made on a week-by-week basis with no clear winner of the battle emerging all season.
Last week, he gave an update on the battle.
“We’re close to making a decision,” Franklin said. “We haven’t sat down and talked to those guys yet. You know, probably a week ago, we were close to making a decision and then held off because we had a couple inconsistent practices, but we’re close to making that decision again.”
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There’s a good chance we see both Grunkemeyer and Smolik— in whatever order— not only this Saturday but for the next two Saturdays.
For some more odds spoilers, Penn State will be heavily favored against Florida International and Villanova as well. The team won’t be tested until No. 7 Oregon comes to down for the White Out game Sept. 27.
