Iowa Football: Hawkeyes Open as Big Favorites vs Western Michigan

It was a familiar scene in Ames on Saturday. The Iowa Hawkeyes didn’t look great outside of a handful of drives, but they did enough. The defense was tremendous. The special teams was special. The Hawkeyes left Jack Trice Stadium with a win over the Iowa State Cyclones for the sixth straight time.

Now they move forward to the final non-conference matchup of the season as the Western Michigan Broncos come to Iowa City for a showdown in Kinnick Stadium. The Broncos are 1-1 on the year and coming off a 48-7 drubbing at the hands of the Syracuse Orange. Their week one win was a home one against St. Francis (of Pennsylvania, in case there was confusion).

While the Hawkeyes continue to fall below the line in the sand of 25 points, perhaps surprisingly our friends over at DraftKings Sportsbook have opened this one with a line north of 25. Which is to say, not only is Vegas expecting Iowa to score at least 25, they are expecting them to score quite a bit more.

Some books have had the number a bit lower, but DraftKings opened this one at Iowa -27 (!!!) with an over/under of 43.5 total points. That implies a final score of 35.25-8.25. At first blush, both of those numbers seem a little big. However, the betting public has already begun to voice their opinion. The line has moved up to Iowa -28 on DK. Simultaneously, the over/under has fallen to 42.5. That puts the new implied score at 35.5-7.5.

I’m not going to tell anyone what to do with their money, but there hasn’t been a ton so far to give me confidence in Iowa breaking north of 35 points this week and nothing about Central Michigan’s 7 points against Syracuse convinces me they’ll get more than a TD against Iowa.

Here’s a quick look at the details for this week’s matchup.

Date: Saturday, September 16th
Time: 2:30 pm CT
Matchup: Western Michigan Broncos (1-1, 0-0) at Iowa Hawkeyes (2-0, 0-0)
Location: Kinnick Stadium – Iowa City, IA
TV: BTN
Preliminary Weather Forecast: partly cloudy with temps in the upper-70s, 10% chance of rain
DraftKings Opening Line: Iowa -27, O/U 43.5

Odds/lines subject to change. T&Cs apply. See draftkings.com/sportsbook for details.