After a long and eventful college football regular season, the most wonderful time of the year is here. Bowl season has arrived and with it comes a myriad of interesting games between teams that we don’t often see paired up against each other in a neutral site setting. This year’s installment of the Valero Alamo Bowl features the Arizona Wildcats against the Oklahoma Sooners. Will the Wildcats finish a terrific 2023 season with a flourish, or can Oklahoma finish off what has been an up-and-down season with a victory? Here is my Arizona vs Oklahoma Same Game Parlay for Thursday’s matchup, which will be televised starting at 9:15 pm ET on ESPN.
One of the benefits of Same Game Parlays, of course, is that you can correlate the plays. That is the plan here, as Arizona winning correlates with Tetairoa McMillan finding the end zone. Let’s break down each of the legs.
Arizona Wildcats ML over Oklahoma Sooners (-115)
For starters, we have to look at the impact the transfer portal has had on this game, particularly for Brent Venables and this Oklahoma team. It's worth mentioning that the Sooners will be without Dillon Gabriel at quarterback, so five-star recruit Jackson Arnold will step into the role for his first career start. He'll be going up against an Arizona defense that greatly improved this season, going from outside the top 100 in most metrics in 2022 to inside the top 40 in 2023. This is a tall task for the young QB and I'm not sure how well he'll be able to handle it early on.
Arizona has been a cash register for months, particularly since the insertion of Noah Fifita at quarterback. Not only did Fifita outperform all expectations after replacing Jaden DeLaura, but he has been one of the most efficient quarterbacks in college football this season, putting up 23 touchdowns to just only 5 interceptions on the year. He should be able to pick apart a Sooners defense that struggled against good passing attacks this season, including poor games against Kansas, Oklahoma State and Texas. I'd argue that Arizona's quarterback and weapons on the outside are better than that of the Jayhawks and Cowboys, so there's reason to expect that the Wildcats will see success in this one. Bear Down!