College Football Betting: New Hampshire at North Dakota State

The college football bowl season is still a couple of days away but there is action on Friday night in the form of the 1-AA/FCS semifinals. In Friday night’s game New Hampshire travels to Fargo, North Dakota to take on top seeded North Dakota State. The other semifinal game will take place on Saturday as Towson takes on Eastern Washington. The winners of the respective semifinal games will face off on January 3 to determine the 1-AA/FCS National Championship. This is a very intriguing matchup between one of the best offenses in 1-AA football against the best defense in the division.

Usually FCS level teams are somewhat ‘under the radar’ among casual college football betting enthusiasts but North Dakota State is no secret. The Bison are good. Really good–as in ‘back to back FCS National Champion’ good. They had the top ranked defense in FCS football last season and returned 18 starters from last year’s team. They started the season with a victory over FBS opponent Kansas State and ran the table the rest of the way. They have bludgeoned two very good opponents in the first two rounds of this tournament beating a pair of South Carolina teams–Coastal Carolina and Furman–by a combined score of 86-21. Last week they manhandled the #3 ranked offense in 1-AA football and there’s plenty of reason to think that they can do it again here.

New Hampshire has already taken care of business on the road twice during this playoffs winning at Maine and Southeast Louisiana. They have a decent offense and plenty of playmakers on both sides of the ball. There’s definitely some interest in taking New Hampshire plus the points–at least based on our power ratings–but at the end of the day we don’t want to get in front of this North Dakota State juggernaut. Heading into the playoffs there was some concern about focus with Bison head coach Craig Bohl leaving to take the vacant position at the University of Wyoming. That appears to not be an issue or, if anything, a strong motivation. Look for North Dakota State to roll on their tough home field as they advance to their third 1-AA Championship game in as many years.

BET NORTH DAKOTA STATE -20 OVER NEW HAMPSHIRE