The No. 2 Washington Huskies carry a national-best 21-game winning streak into Monday night's College Football Playoff national championship game against No. 1 Michigan in Houston, yet Washington is currently a 5-point underdog. Perhaps that's where the Huskies want to be, as they are 5-0 straight up as underdogs under second-year coach Kalen DeBoer. The betting action on the spread is fairly even as of this writing, while the player taking the most props action is Michigan running back Blake Corum.
The title game is a matchup of the nation's only undefeated teams and marks the fifth matchup of 14-0 teams in the 10-year history of the College Football Playoff. The CFP expands to 12 teams starting next season.
At DraftKings, there's currently a 50-50 handle split on the spread, with Washington taking a slight 54% lean on tickets. At BGM, Michigan is taking 53% of the bets and 56% of the money. Both sites have a solid double lean on the Over of 56 points. An Over result would almost surely be good news for Washington because it is not built to win a lower-scoring game. Michigan and its stellar defense prefer to play that way.
This will be the final NCAA game for Corum, who statistically will go down as one of the best tailbacks in Michigan history. With 3,603 rushing yards, Corum is eighth on UM's all-time rushing list, but has found the end zone like him. Corum's 17-yard rushing touchdown in overtime to beat Alabama in the national semifinals was his 25th of the season, a single-season program record. It was his 56th career rushing TD to pass Anthony Thomas for the Michigan record. Corum's 59 total TDs also are a UM record. His 344 points are 11 shy of kicker Jake Moody's record.
The three most popular player props tonight at BetMGM are Corum to score the game's first touchdown (+275), an anytime Corum TD (-350), and Corum Over 104.5 rushing yards (-115). He has scored at least one TD in every game this season but has topped that rushing yardage total just once -- a 145-yard effort at Penn State on Nov. 11. Washington is not very strong against the run and allowed Texas to pile up 180 rushing yards in the national semifinals.
At DraftKings, Corum is taking a whopping 51% of the handle and 41% of the bets to be the game's first TD scorer. The only other player in double digits is Washington wideout Rome Odunze (+800) at 11% in both. Corum also is taking the most action of any player to win Offensive MVP honors as the +400 third favorite behind Wolverines quarterback J.J. McCarthy (+125) and Washington QB Michael Penix Jr. (+200), who is taking the second-most action. Penix Over 1.5 passing TDs (-210) is quite popular as well.
Michigan opened this season at +1000 to win the national championship. It was +200 entering the semifinals and is now -210. Washington opened at +3000, was +650 entering the semis and is now +170. A bettor at BetMGM wagered $4,000 on Washington back when it was +2000 to win the College Football Playoff and could be looking at an $80,000 return. Another player at the site recently dropped $100,000 on the Huskies ATS.
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