Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl
Tags: Sports, Sports Betting

Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl

The bowl with everyone’s favorite name. Originally this bowl in St. Pete’s was the magicJack Bowl. While that name seems awesome it was certainly superseded by the Beef O’Brady’s Bowl. And that name was honestly good enough. Unbelievably that sponsorship has been upstaged again, this time by the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla moniker. This one may be impossible to beat as Gasparilla was really, truly a pirate. And how can you top that?

The line for this bowl opened Temple -7 with a total of 56. The line has stayed steady at Temple -7 but, the total has shifted up a bit to 57.5. While these teams have never faced, the CUSA and AAC conferences have some bowl history, even this year. The AAC is now 0–5, after Wednesday nights win by La Tech, versus CUSA teams in bowl games. Maybe a function of style? Or maybe a function of the AAC sending its lesser teams to these bowls and CUSA sending their best?

Let’s start, as always by looking at the expected points to be scored versus the expected points to be allowed for these two teams:

This chart explains that Temple is scoring a lot less than they should be expected to versus their schedule and FIU is giving up a lot more points than they should be expected to versus their schedule. As a whole these numbers show that these two teams are essentially equal. This comparison method suggests a fair spread would actually be FIU -1, pointing to huge value on the Golden Panthers.

The yards per play metric doesn’t do Temple any favours either.

This metric again shows that there is not much between the two teams and that the spread should be closer to Temple -1.5. That means there is about 5.5 points of value on FIU. As pointed out yesterday in the Frisco Bowl preview teams with that kind of YPP value have, not only all covered as dogs but, have all actually won outright; La Tech continued that trend with a smoke show last night (although the game never went over the total despite FIFTY TWO [52] points at the half!!!!!!!!!!, so apologies there to anyone who bet that).

Digger a little deeper and looking at the red zone and 3rd down numbers doesn’t really change the picture for the Temple Owls.

These teams have super close 3rd down numbers on both offense and defense, in fact they are almost exactly the same. Where these is a huge disparity is in red zone offense. When FIU gets inside the 20 yard line… they score (2nd best percentage in the country). FIU also has a small advantage in holding their opponents off the board as well, 77% to 81%.

The last set of numbers these previews have generally looked at are kind of messy in this match-up. There is no discernible line of thinking.

Temple sacks the qb at a much better rate yet FIU is much more proficient at getting in to the backfield and tackling for a loss. This is probably caused by Temple having two star defensive lineman who sack the qb a ton but, a defense as a whole who can’t get into the backfield — Temple is one of only three teams in the country to have multiple players in the top 30 in sacks (USC and TCU would be the others). If FIU can slow down those two monsters they may be able to win the field possession battle.

While the numbers game sure points heavily to FIU there are some intangibles to consider. One is injury concerns. FIU will probably be without WR Thomas Owens and he could be the best player (to his team) to miss a bowl so far this year. He was their leading receiver by a mile (887 yards receiving and 6 TDs, the next best player on their roster had 294 and 3) and it is hard to not want to downgrade their amazing red zone stats in his absence. Another point to consider against FIU is that they played one of the worst schedules in the nation and this match-up actually gives us the biggest strength of schedule disparity of the bowl season so far, 77 to 118.

As far as motivation goes, neither coaching staff is going anywhere as they are both in their first season. Both teams should be fairly excited to be here: despite this being Temple’s fourth minor bowl in a row, they did have to go 3–1 down the stretch and under-go a qb change to qualify for the post-season, while FIU, although they were already qualified at 6–4, won their last two games in a smashingly decisive way scoring 41 and 63 points on their way to an 8–4 record. Butch Davis should have these kids riled right up as they are in position to set the school record for wins and this will be the schools first bowl since 2011.

A lot of things are pointing at FIU and while they may not win, they should keep it close despite the massive difference in schedule strength.

FIU +7,

Good luck