Alabama Keeps Winning But Has Not Done Well as Single-Digit Favorite
Scott Morris | November 2, 2016
During Week 10 of the college football regular season, the No. 1 ranked Alabama Crimson Tide visits Baton Rouge to play the No. 14 ranked LSU Tigers.
Alabama has been on top of the rankings since the preseason and have not disappointed going 8-0 straight up and 6-2 against the spread. On the road, the Tide is 3-0 SU and 2-1 ATS.
It seems that Alabama had been at the top of the rankings for college football forever, as they are the defending national champion and have not been knocked off their perch the first 9 weeks of this season.
Alabama enters the game on Saturday night with LSU having won 20 straight games, the longest active winning streak in the nation.
Even though Alabama has fared well in the win loss column straight up, there is one area in which the Crimson Tide has struggled. That is where it relates to bettors, the area is as single-digit chalk.
Since the beginning of the 2010 college football season, Alabama has been chalk in the single-digits for 23 games. In those close to two dozen games, Alabama is 16-7 SU, but just 8-14-1 ATS.
The majority of the games the Tide lost in that stretch were from the latter part of their 2012 season through to the beginning of their 2014 season when the Crimson Tide was 0-6-1 ATS as single-digit chalk.
This week, the Tide under the tutelage of Nick Saban their head coach opened as 7-point chalk for their road game at LSU. This is just the first time this season, that Alabama has been a single-digit favorite.
Over its last six games versus LSU, Alabama is 4-2 SU but only 2-3-1 ATS. In each of those six games, the Tide was single-digit chalk.
The last time Alabama was single-digit chalk was the national championship game versus Clemson. The Tide entered that game as a 6.5-point favorite. The Tide was victorious in the game, but did not cover winning 45-40.
