We tried to go back to the well with a fade of Notre Dame with Navy as last week’s ‘Ugly Underdog,’ but we didn’t stand a chance. A late scratch of quarterback Blake Horvath doomed us on arrival. Oh, well. That’s life in this game. We move on to Week 12 and look to improve our record to 8-4 with a punt on UCF against one of college football’s most exciting outfits, Texas Tech.
The Texas Tech Red Raiders are in the midst of one of the best seasons in their history.
The Boys from Lubbock are 9-1, sitting atop the Big 12, and look like they’re headed to the College Football Playoff for the first time. ESPN’s model gives the Red Raiders an 89 percent chance of making it to the dance.
All that stands in their way is games with UCF and West Virginia, two of the worst teams in the Big 12 this season.
The Red Raiders are 23.5-point favorites over the Knights on Saturday.
A few years ago, it looked like UCF was on its way to becoming a rising power in college football. The Knights went 35-4 between 2017 and 2019, and a transition to the Big 12 seemed like something the program could handle, especially with Gus Malzahn at the helm.
For one reason or another, Malzahn’s tenure in Orlando never got out of first gear, and the Knights quickly fell behind the pack in the newly expanded Big 12.
UCF tagged Scott Frost, who was the head coach during the Knights’ 13-0 season in 2017, to get things back on track. Year 1 of Frost’s second stint at Central Florida has been expectedly bumpy.
Frost wants his teams to overwhelm opponents with speed and tempo. In his first go-round, he adopted the motto “UCFast” to describe his coaching philosophy.
Clearly, Frost has had to adjust his approach in 2025. UCF ranks 75th in the country in seconds per play, and the Knights have not gotten significantly faster in their recent games. A high-octane offense was UCF’s calling card during its heyday, but this year it’s been the defense that kept the Knights from disaster.
While the offense ranks 64th in the country in yards per play and 94th in points per game, the defense sits inside the top 30 in both categories. UCF has been especially stingy against the pass, ranking 19th in yards per pass allowed and 18th in passing yards allowed per game.
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Those are numbers you can lean on against Texas Tech and its quarterback Behren Morton.
A dark horse candidate for the Heisman through the first half of the season, Morton’s production has slowed a little bit of late, but that’s down to injuries more than anything else. The senior signal-caller missed some time in October and is still not at 100 percent. Morton was in good enough nick to put together a fine performance against BYU in Week 11, but that was a massive game against the team that the Red Raiders are directly competing with for a spot in the Big 12 Championship and College Football Playoff.
It’s safe to assume that the Red Raiders will handle their star QB with much more caution against UCF.
UCF’s defense could hang with Texas Tech’s offense even if Morton was at his best, but the Knights stand an even better chance with the Red Raiders doing their best to protect their signal-caller.
And it’s not just the matchup when Texas Tech has the ball that makes UCF an appealing bet as a 23.5-point underdog. It’s also the situational spot. The Red Raiders just put together one of the biggest wins in school history last week, beating BYU in a clash of the two favorites to win the Big 12. A lot of people watched that game and left thinking that Texas Tech is headed for big things.
There is no better time to sell high than after a season-defining win like that. It’s a classic hangover situation.
The Play: UCF +23.5 (-108, FanDuel)
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Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.
