Is Colorado, led by Deion Sanders, worth fading ahead of matchup with Colorado State?

The Colorado Buffaloes are a public darling unlike anything we’ve ever seen in college football.

After shocking TCU as a trendy three-touchdown underdog in Week 1, the Buffs easily took care of Nebraska, 36-14, in Week 2 as one of the most popular bets of the entire weekend. Think about that for a second. This was one of the biggest betting windows of the season with the NFL returning and the bookies were seeing just as much action on Deion Sanders’ Buffaloes as they were on NFL teams.

“The ticket count on Colorado is crazy,” BetMGM’s Scott Shelton told Vegas Insider’s Patrick Everson before Colorado’s victory against Nebraska. “There’s not an NFL team with as many spread bets as Colorado. They have four times as many spread bets as any pro team.”

Bookmakers knew once Deion Sanders came to Boulder that the money would follow on their games, but most assumed that the hype would quickly die down. Colorado was a three-touchdown underdog at TCU in Week 1 and even if they covered the large spread, things would settle down with a loss.

And it’s not like oddsmakers are uncomfortable with this kind of hype. In fact, they typically welcome situations when the public falls in love with a fairytale team because, well, these things typically come to a screeching halt and the bookies are happy to cash in on that.

But Colorado would throw a wrench into the whole situation with an impressive victory over TCU, causing the everybody in college football to stop and wonder if this whole thing is going to work. The 45-42 win for the Buffaloes was a terrible result for sportsbooks and oddsmakers reacted quickly by adjusting Colorado from a 7.5-point underdog to a 3-point favorite against Nebraska in Week 2.

When an adjustment like that happens you’ll almost always see smart money buy back against it, but the money never stopped showing up on the Buffaloes, which left most bookmakers in a bad spot when Coach Prime’s kids took care of the Cornhuskers.

And things could get worse this weekend.

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Colorado is a 22.5-point favorite against Colorado State in the Rocky Mountain Showdown and you can feel pretty good that money is going to come piling in on the Buffs throughout the week. And to add to the drama both College Gameday and FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff will be in town to set the stage for the in-state rivalry game. It’s going to be a zoo.

With so much public money expected to come in on Coach Prime and the Buffaloes, it will be quite a story to watch in the betting market. Some sportsbooks posted Game of the Year lines for this matchup in the offseason and had Colorado as a 10-point home favorite, that number has obviously been obliterated as the Buffs touched -23.5 at one point on Monday before meeting some market resistance.

That will likely be the song and dance all week as recreational bettors load up on Colorado and sharps buy back on the underdogs, hoping the market has gone haywire on the Buffaloes.

But as we’ve seen so far with Colorado, just because the public is all over a team doesn’t automatically make it a bad bet...at least not yet.

The Inquirer is not an online gambling operator, or a gambling site. We provide this information about sports betting for entertainment purposes only.