{"id":17345,"date":"2011-09-01T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T17:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=17345"},"modified":"2011-08-31T13:09:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T18:09:54","slug":"south-florida-bulls-at-notre-dame-fighting-irish-2011-college-football-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/south-florida-bulls-at-notre-dame-fighting-irish-2011-college-football-predictions-17345\/","title":{"rendered":"South Florida Bulls at Notre Dame Fighting Irish 2011 College Football Predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Florida Bulls at No. 10 Notre Dame Fighting Irish
\nSaturday, 9\/3\/11, 3:30 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 NBC
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Notre Dame -10.5
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Notre Dame -10
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 45
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 47
\nOdds Courtesy of Bookmaker<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish will be led by QB Dayne Crist in the 2011 season opener<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

South Florida will likely enter as double-digit underdogs in Saturday\u2019s contest at Notre Dame Stadium and many of the players are exciting to play against one of the more storied programs in all of college football.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s giving me chills in my stomach just thinking about it,\u201d said Bulls linebacker Sam Barrington.\u00a0 It\u2019s the program\u2019s first-ever trip to South Bend and the team is coming off an 8-5 record under second-year head coach Skip Holtz.\u00a0 He knows his way around this field of course, as he\u2019s the son of legendary coach and current ESPN analyst Lou Holtz.\u00a0 South Florida is 6-5 ATS on the road the last two seasons.<\/p>\n

The Bulls football program is still relatively new at the Division I level, but that hasn\u2019t stopped it from posting five straight eight–win seasons, being a member of just 15 schools nationally to accomplish the feat.\u00a0 South Florida has posted seasons of .500 or better in 12 of its 14 years at the game\u2019s highest level collegiately.\u00a0 Opening up with a straight-up underdog victory wouldn\u2019t be that surprising due to the school\u2019s 10-4 mark in season openers.\u00a0 Quarterback B.J. Daniels comes back for his junior season and has thrown for 3,754 yards and 25 touchdowns.<\/p>\n

Notre Dame is expected to play in front of its 220th straight sellout and will be entering as the No. 16 team in the country according to the AP Poll.\u00a0 The Fighting Irish finished the first year under head coach Brian Kelly with a flourish, including wins over USC and Miami.\u00a0 Much of the offseason has been spent determining who will be the starting quarterback for the season opener and Dayne Crist has won out.\u00a0 \u201cHe is a much better football player than last year,\u201d commented Kelly.\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019s tougher mentally.\u201d\u00a0 Notre Dame is 3-11 ATS as a favorite and 3-8 ATS at home the last two seasons.<\/p>\n

The Fighting Irish have won nine of their last 10 season openers inside Saturday\u2019s venue and the defense is getting plenty of preseason accolades.\u00a0 Six players have started at least 20 games and the unit held its last four opponents in 2010 to just 233.3 yards per game.\u00a0 Turnovers are likely to determine the winner in this contest, as Kelly\u2019s teams have posted a 30-1 record when his team wins the turnover battle.\u00a0 Notre Dame owns a 56-11-1 mark in playing teams that make their first appearance inside its stadium.<\/p>\n

Bettors will likely back the Irish due to their 4-0 ATS mark heading into this contest, while the Bulls are 1-3 ATS in September contests.<\/p>\n

The college football handicappers at Maddux Sports are ready for a huge campaign and ready for you to join in.\u00a0 Stop sitting on the sidelines and get a long-term package today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Florida Bulls at No. 10 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Saturday, 9\/3\/11, 3:30 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 NBC Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Notre Dame -10.5 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Notre Dame -10 Opening Total:\u00a0 45 Current Total:\u00a0 47 Odds Courtesy of Bookmaker South Florida will likely enter as double-digit underdogs in Saturday\u2019s contest at Notre Dame Stadium and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":7114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200,1444],"tags":[3356,1192,3124,1311,2802,1299,1155],"class_list":["post-17345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-football","category-headlines","tag-b-j-daniels","tag-brian-kelly","tag-dayne-crist","tag-notre-dame-fighting-irish","tag-notre-dame-stadium","tag-skip-holtz","tag-south-florida-bulls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17346,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17345\/revisions\/17346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}