Louisville football: What’s up with the WKU point spread?

Louisville football enters a neutral site game against Western Kentucky with a tantalizing point spread for Cards fans.

Coming off of its first win of the season, Louisville football is looking to start a winning streak on Saturday when Scott Satterfield and company travel to Nashville, Tennessee to face the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers.

A decent indicator of how the Cards will fare is typically the Las Vegas sports books, who are almost always spot-on with metrics and predicting the outcome of games far before they happen.

Look no further than Louisville’s first game of the season, a home opener against Notre Dame. Given the Fighting Irish’s outstanding 2018, which landed them in the college football playoffs, one would think they’d be heavy favorites over a Cardinals squad that is breaking in a new system and coming off of their worst season in program history.

Many were perplexed over the line, which favored Notre Dame by 17-19 points, assuming the Irish would pull away by a much wider margin. However, the game finished almost exactly as Vegas predicted.

That’s what has some Louisville football fans worried entering their third match-up of the year against what appears to be a downtrodden Western Kentucky team.

Some sportsbooks like Bovada have the Cards as a 9.5 point favorite, while others, have the Louisville only favored by 8 points.

Consider that last season, Louisville opened as a 21-point favorite against Western, and last week they were three score favorites against a similarly talented EKU squad.

So, what gives? The Cards are off to a much better start than anyone expected nationally, while the Toppers were upset by Southland Conference squad Central Arkansas.

Though it is considered a home game for WKU, this is expected to be more like a neutral site game with many Cards fans making the short trip to Nashville.

Perhaps last year’s game plays a factor.

Louisville fans can recount a narrow home victory over a lesser Western Kentucky team who they trailed at the half 14-0. The Cards ultimately squeaked by thanks to a blocked field goal in the third and a missed game-tying attempt in the waning moments.

Maybe Vegas isn’t convinced quite yet.

Truth be told, it is going to take more than an 18-point loss and a drubbing of an FCS team for national pundits to think Louisville is “back.” No matter how good or bad the season, Eastern Kentucky and Western Kentucky are two teams Louisville should be expected to beat every single time based on talent, resources, and scheduling alone.

The Verdict: Louisville plus the points is a safe play

It’s not a lock by any means. In-state rivalries and first road trips of the season always make things a little more interesting. However, if there is a time that Vegas is always wrong, it’s at towards the beginning of the season when there is a lesser sample size.

If you want a safe bet on the Cards, Louisville by a touchdown and a field goal against this Hilltoppers squad is as close to “safe” as you will find entering a tough, unpredictable ACC slate.

Louisville football fans are still not in a place to expect a blowout by any means, but this may be a case where Vegas algorithms are steering the experts wrong.