Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Allegacy Federal Credit Union Stadium, Winston-Salem, NC

Wake Forest +20½ -110 over Miami

Streaming: ESPN

7:30 PM EST. Miami has played two football games and apparently we're ready to put the Hurricanes in the College Football Playoff championship game. They beat Stanford, then committed a felony against Florida A&M, 77-7, piling up a school-record 856 yards and 42 first downs in a game so ridiculous that both teams agreed to shorten the fourth quarter by five minutes. When the opponent starts negotiating how much longer it has to participate, you've probably had a decent afternoon. Miami has outscored its first two opponents 123-13, Darian Mensah has barely thrown an incompletion, and the Hurricanes are ranked fifth in the country. Fantastic. Now everybody get in line and lay three touchdowns on the road.

That's where we get interested. This isn't a referendum on whether Miami is good. Miami is very good. It might be great. The question is how much are you willing to pay after watching the Hurricanes spend two weeks beating the shit out of teams that had no business being on the same field? Point spreads eventually reach a number where all the wonderful things everyone knows about the favorite become part of the price. Miami isn't laying 10. It isn't laying 14. It's laying 20½ on the road, and we're happy to take the other side while everyone is still staring at 123-13 like it's a winning Powerball ticket.

Wake Forest isn't walking in here with a water pistol either. The Deacons have scored 38 points in both games and Gio Lopez gives them an experienced quarterback in a stand-alone game at home. More interesting is Miami's secondary situation. The Hurricanes were without their top three cornerbacks last week, forcing safety Bryce Fitzgerald to play corner and putting freshman JJ Dunnigan into the starting safety role. Against Florida A&M, you can probably play a defensive tackle at corner and survive. Wake Forest represents a different level of opposition. Miami's defensive personnel issues don't have to turn Wake into Oregon. With 20½ points, a few productive possessions can become extremely valuable.

And that's the beautiful thing about these enormous numbers: the back door is always sitting there with the porch light on. Miami can control the game, lead comfortably and have every television analyst spending three hours telling us how impressive the Hurricanes look—and Wake Forest can still cash our ticket with one meaningless fourth-quarter touchdown after Miami has mentally checked out and started thinking about the flight home. The Hurricanes have become one of the easiest bets on the board because everybody has seen the same destruction. We're not stepping in front of Miami because we think the Hurricanes stink. We're stepping in front of them because 20½ points is a shitload of points, particularly on the road against a team capable of scoring. Let everybody else bet the ranking, the 123-13 scoreboard and the 856-yard highlight reel. We'll take Wake Forest and all 20½ of them.

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