NCAA Football Parlay Pick – Michigan Wolverines vs. Western Michigan

In past years, Michigan football games against MAC schools were nothing more than glorified scrimmages. The fans still showed up and sold out 100,000+ seat Michigan Stadium for the games, but whether or not Michigan would win was never, ever in doubt.

All that changed last year when Toledo became the first MAC team to hand Michigan a loss in a 13-10 shocker.

Now, all of a sudden, the Michigan-Western Michigan game on Saturday looms as perhaps one of the biggest opening games in the history of the program.

Lose this one, and Rich Rodriguez’s already warm seat gets a whole lot hotter and his support among influential alumni begins to evaporate into thin air.

Michigan is still a solid favorite going into this one as BetOnline has the Wolverines as a -13 favorite with the over/under at 56.

Michigan is only 1-7 in its last 8 games against the spread at home, but this one is a different animal altogether with so much on the line. The new-look Michigan Stadium supposedly has a new design that holds in more crowd noise between the massive new suites and brick façade (although it’s not quite yet done), and between that change and the more fired-up crowd, emotions will run high for the maize in blue as the favorite in this one.

Western Michigan had a solid year last year going 9-4 and they’re led by an NFL-caliber QB in Tim Hiller, so they’ll be able to score a few points on Michigan in the game, but Michigan usually does quite well against spread passing teams so most of their points will likely come after the Wolverines have already taken the lead.

It’s the spread teams with mobile QB’s and option running attacks like Oregon, Illinois, and even (gasp) Appalachain State that have traditionally given their defense problems.

Tate Forcier makes the start for Michigan as a freshman in this one, and while it sounds like a big risk to bet on a team starting a freshman in such an important game, keep in mind that most successful freshman QB’s such as Robert Griffin at Baylor and Terrelle Pryor at OSU are spread offense QB’s who can run. Forcier fits that mold and he has been enrolled for longer than a typical freshman, so he should be ready to go.

In the end, Michigan’s running game led by the home-run threat Carlos Brown and perhaps the senior power back Brandon Minor (who is questionable but should play) will be too much for an average Western Michigan defense as the Wolverines win this one soundly.

We’ll find out whether or not Michigan is truly behind Rodriguez in this one and all indications are that they are indeed behind him, and that could galvanize the team and lead to an easier-than-expected win in the opener against the underdog Broncos.

The Pick: Michigan (-13) and the under (+/-56).