Gauging what to make of programs with new coaches is particularly challenging in the modern age of college football, when rosters can be flipped in a span of weeks with a quick wave of the portal wand. We've seen previously unfathomable one-year turnarounds at schools like Indiana, followed by monumental first-year flops at schools like North Carolina. If you're willing to look under the hood and dissect the nuances of each situation, there is value to be found from a betting perspective with new regimes.
A year ago, Wake Forest's over on a 4.5 win total was priced at +116, and it hit before the end of October as the Demon Deacons rode a favorable schedule to an 8-4 mark under first-year coach Jake Dickert. That was among the five bets included in this column, which is now in its fifth year. Four of them hit, as my four-year record on win totals improved to 15-3 with five pushes.
This year, we are returning to the first-year coach vein for three of our five selections. The first season is not always an indicator of a coach's future viability for a variety of reasons. Wildly imbalanced conference schedules are a major swing factor, and that's a large part of the rationale for my faith in Penn State.
New coach Matt Campbell's learning curve will be made simpler by the absence of three Big Ten heavyweights from the Nittany Lions' 2026 schedule. My degree of confidence in these is high, and a 3-2 record with these odds is guaranteed to break even. If you want to go bold and take Arkansas to go under 3.5 and/or go with Minnesota over 6.5, the payout could be even better.
Here are the 2026 season's best bets, with odds courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook. A schedule that misses Indiana, Ohio State and Oregon will ease Matt Campbell's transition from Iowa State to Penn State. The Nittany Lions' nonconference slate of Marshall, Temple and Buffalo is also light, and five of Penn State's nine league games are at home.
Campbell's Iowa State-heavy transfer class is the No. 4-ranked haul in the country, and a nice sampling of talent from the James Franklin era is still around. Among them are a star left tackle in Anthony Donkoh, a veteran leader at linebacker in Tony Rojas and a proven starter at corner in Audavion Collins. All told, the conditions are optimized for the Nittany Lions to win 10 or 11 regular-season games and crack the CFP in Year 1 of the new regime.
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