Tennessee football: SEC and top 25 picks and gambling bets for Week 1 of 2021
Week 1 is here! College football is back to normal after last season’s crazy schedule, and Tennessee football gets to be the school that kicks things off early this year for the SEC. Things could not be more exciting on Rocky Top.
The Vols open things up against a Bowling Green Falcons Thursday. More on that later, though. This post is about all the major games happening this weekend, not just the one UT is playing in. Excitement is back where it should be.
Finally, non-conference play has returned to the SEC. Tennessee football joins the rest of the league in taking part in that during Week 1, and with non-conference play comes our return to predicting the outcomes.
This year, we’ll bet the spread and the over/under while also listing the moneyline (if one exists) and picking straight up for every game we cover. All of our gambling picks are going to be based on the WynnBET betting odds, and we’ll cover every game involving an SEC team and every game involving two top 25 teams on a weekly basis.
With every SEC team playing a non-conference game during Week 1, that makes for lots of games for us to cover. We’ve got all 14 SEC teams playing non-conference games and three non-SEC games that involve two top 25 teams, including one involving a top 25 Group of Five team.
That makes for 17 games for us to pick this week. When you include SEC games, there are five top 25 matchups this week, making for an epic Week 1 in a return to normalcy. Two of the games we cover involve an FCS team, and as we’ll do throughout the season, we won’t bet on them. They usually don’t have any odds.
As usual, we’ll go through every game in the order that it’s scheduled to be played and close out with Tennessee football’s matchup, so let’s go ahead and dive in. These are our Vols, SEC and top 25 predictions and gambling bets for Week 1 of the 2021 season.