Week 1 of the college football season has arrived, and Thursday's slate should serve as the perfect kickoff to the opening weekend as Shane Jackson is ready to dive into his favorite college football player props for Thursday's Week 1 games based on the best NCAAF odds.
College football takes center stage for the next five days for what should be a doozy of a Week 1 slate. Thursday's matchup between Utah and Florida figures to be one of the best games of the weekend, but there are certainly no shortage of opportunities to bet on college football.
After mostly focusing on main markets in previous seasons, I'm planning to do more prop betting in 2023. Our best sports betting apps continue to offer more betting options each year, and it would be foolish to not take advantage.
I play in multiple college football fantasy leag ues and certainly am familiar with betting/making projections, so I don't expect this to be too much of an adjustment. But it will be interesting to see how I mold my process over the next several weeks, and hopefully, we can all cash plenty of bets along the way.
With that, let's dive into my favorite college football player props for what should be a fun Thursday night of college football.
Here are our best college football player props (odds via our best college football betting sites; pick confidence based on a 1-to-5-star scale).
College football player props for Thursday Week 1
- Prop: RJ Harvey Over 76.5 rushing yards vs. Kent State (-120 via DraftKings) ???
- SGP: Harvey Over 75.5 rushing yards and score a touchdown (+134 via Barstool) ???
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College football player props for Thursday Week 1
RJ Harvey enters the 2023 season as the starting running back for Central Florida, and he might not have to look over his shoulder much. In this week's depth chart, there wasn't an OR in the running back room with Harvey clearly ahead of Johnny Richardson and others.
That's good news for Harvey, who came on late last season and earned three starts while playing in 13 games. He was named All-AAC second team after finishing with 796 yards on 118 attempts (6.7 yards per carry) to go along with five touchdowns. Harvey cleared this mark three straight weeks last season during a str etch against Cincinnati (84 yards on 18 attempts), Memphis (151 yards on 17 attempts), and Tulane (83 yards on 12 attempts).
Harvey didn't play in the opener against South Carolina State, when Guz Malzahn gave his top back 22 carries that led to just 74 yards. We expect a similar emphasis on the ground against Kent State in a game the Golden Knights are favored by more than five touchdowns.
I project Harvey to clear this total with relative ease before UCF eventually lets up in preparation for a Week 2 trip to Boise State. Barstool offers the lowest total at 75.5 rushing yards, but the vig is -125. Caesars offers similar juice as DraftKings, but has the rushing prop set north of 80 yards.
As a result, DraftKings offers the best deal on UCF's starting running back.
I plan to split one unit between these two picks, but they are obviously somewhat rela ted. DraftKings and FanDuel both offer same-game parlays, but you have to shop the alternate rushing markets. That forces us to pick 80-plus rushing yards or 70-plus rushing yards for Harvey to make our SGP.
Instead, we will stick with the original rushing prop by playing this at Barstool. While I project Harvey to have a big night, there is always a chance that UCF opts to play its backups sooner than anticipated, making every yard count.
More importantly, Harvey is -260 to score a touchdown at Barstool, while being listed at -650 at FanDuel. While the best sportsbooks deserve credit for having touchdown props, it's on us to take advantage of these price discrepancies.
According to collegefootballdata.com, Harvey's rushing usage was 22% last year, which was the same as quarterback John Rhys Plumlee. With Isaiah Bowser and his 34% rushing usage out of the picture, we expect Harvey to be the primary option out of the backfield. That should lead to more opportunities in the red zone for a team that averaged 2.5 rushing touchdowns per game last season.
Harvey is +310 to score the first touchdown and +105 to score multiple times, per FanDuel, but we'd rather just count on him to find paydirt once in the opener.
College football best bets made 08/31/2023 at 2:05 p.m. ET.
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