Western Michigan at Rice

Bet it or track it

Tap a price to send it to your DraftKings betslip. Tail it instead — or as well — and it gets graded into My Record once the game is final. Pushes are settled as pushes, which matters here: a 3 or a 7 is the most common margin in college football.

Returning production

* Outside 0–100% on purpose — production is PPA-weighted, so a departing player who cost his team yards pushes the share above 100 and a returning group with negative combined output shows below zero.

The read

• The spread has moved from 11.5 to 8.5 since it opened, toward the home side. It crossed 10, changing the result in 3.6% of historical games.
• A total of 42.5 sits on the low side of real college football scores (the median FBS game lands on 54). That places the number; it does not predict the result — overs land almost exactly 50% against closing totals.
• SP+ and the market differ by 4.8 points — SP+ rates the home side higher. Worth knowing, but not a signal: we backtested betting that disagreement and it went 49.8% against the spread, versus the 52.4% needed to break even.

Team profile

How games at these numbers have gone

• Spread 8.5 — the 7-10 point band. In 1,074 archived games at this number, the favorite covered 51.2% of the time — a coin flip once the 95% range (48.2–54.2%) is taken into account.
• Total 42.5 — this game's spread sits in the 7-14 point band. In 1,954 archived games with a spread this size, the over hit 48.6% of the time — a coin flip once the 95% range (46.4–50.8%) is taken into account.

Measured on our archive of FBS games with a closing line and a final score. Context, not a pick — see every band.

SP+ team strength · 2026

SP+ implies Rice +3.7 versus the market's +8.5 — a 4.8-point disagreement.

Context, not a pick — tap the ⓘ for what these numbers mean and what we measured.