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

Texas -3½ +101 over Ole Miss

7:30 PM EST. Start with the only question that matters: who in their right mind is taking Texas in this game? The Longhorns are 1-5 against the spread this season and have failed to cover five straight. If you've bet on Texas once this year, you ripped up the ticket. Twice, three times, four times — you're not just sick of them, you're never going back to that window again. This is the former No. 1 team in the country, now ranked 18th, coming off back-to-back home losses by the identical score of 27-24, as a 7½-point favorite against Oklahoma and as a 13½-point favorite against Florida. Their quarterback is on the hot seat, their best defensive player is out, and their stock is not just low — it's in the gutter, with the whole country standing around watching it sit there.

Now look at what the oddsmakers did with that wreckage. They made Texas a 3½-point favorite. Not 3. Not a pick'em. Three and a half — they put the hook on the most important number in football, and understand what that hook is for: it's there to make Ole Miss irresistible. Getting +3½, the hook over a field goal, on a Rebels team that just outscored Vanderbilt and Missouri by a combined 83-20, that just steamrolled Missouri 31-3 on national television, with a quarterback who has barely been touched all season? That looks like the bet of the week, and that's exactly why it's priced that way. The hook isn't a gift. It's bait. Oddsmakers are begging you to play Ole Miss here, and when the books start begging, we start looking at the other side of the counter.

Because underneath the stock prices, this matchup is a whole lot tighter than the last two weeks suggest. Every Texas game against a Power Four opponent this season has been a one-score rock fight — the Longhorns average 23 points in those games and allow 23.5, and nobody, not Ohio State, not Oklahoma, not Florida, has scored more than 27 on this defense all year. Meanwhile the Rebels' glossy record comes with a wart nobody mentions while they're cashing Ole Miss tickets: statistically, this is the worst defense in the SEC, giving up 390 yards a game. Trinidad Chambliss is excellent and Kewan Lacy just ran for 122 on Missouri, but Ole Miss has been feasting for two weeks on overmatched teams while rested off a bye, and now it walks into Austin to face a desperate team whose entire season is on the line Saturday night.

We're not going to insult you by pretending Texas is appealing. Arch Manning has as many turnovers as touchdowns over the last three weeks, he was sacked five times and fumbled away the final possession against Florida, the backup is suddenly getting first-team reps in practice, and Colin Simmons — 8½ sacks in the last three weeks alone — is expected to miss this game with an ankle injury. All of that is true, and all of it is why this number is 3½ and not 7. But we're not in the prediction business. We're in the numbers business. This is buy low and sell high in its purest form: one team nobody on Earth wants to bet, priced at rock bottom, against one team everybody wants to bet, priced at its absolute peak, with the oddsmakers hanging a shiny hook on 3 to push the public money exactly where they want it. We'll hold our nose, lay the 3½ with the home team, and let the bait sit there for everyone else.

Sportsinteraction