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    Alabama vs. Missouri SEC football betting odds: Crimson Tide have been money in season openers under Nick Saban

    Alabama simply doesn't lose season openers under Nick Saban and almost always covers.
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    The best league in college football finally joins the 2020 party on Saturday as the SEC kicks off its 10-game, conference-only schedule. Alabama is ranked second in the nation behind Clemson and opens at short-handed Missouri with a 7 p.m. ET kickoff on ESPN. The Crimson Tide are 28-point favorites on the William Hill college football odds, and Bama's history in season openers under Nick Saban says it will almost surely cover that number.

    Saban is 13-0 straight up in season openers with Alabama, although this clearly will be the latest Week 1 game he has had, and it's a rare non neutral-site matchup. Bama was supposed to open with a terrific matchup against USC on Sept. 5 at AT&T Stadium outside Dallas, but that was canceled due to the coronavirus. Alabama was set to receive $6 million for that game.

    The Tide are 12-1 against the spread in Saban's openers, winning them by an average score of 40.7-11.1 and as 20.7-point favorites on average. The lone time they didn't cover was as 23-point favorites in 2014 in beating West Virginia 33-23 at a neutral site in Atlanta.

    Mac Jones has unsurprisingly been named Alabama's starting quarterback as he filled in well for an injured Tua Tagovailoa last year. From Oct. 25 on, Jones posted the second-highest QBR (92.7) in the country behind only Joe Burrow, the Heisman winner from LSU. Jones, who beat out touted freshman recruit Bryce Young in camp, is +1400 on the SportsLine odds to win the Heisman Trophy. Alabama is the -130 favorite at William Hill to win the SEC title.

    It will be the Missouri head coaching debut of Eli Drinkwitz. In his first year as a head coach overall, he led Appalachian State to the 2019 Sun Belt Championship and finished 12-1 on the season. Drinkwitz has some SEC experience as he worked under Gus Malzahn at Auburn in 2010-11.

    Drinkwitz had previously announced that 12 Tigers were ruled out of this game after testing positive for COVID-19, but inconclusive tests that recently came back negative will allow five of those 12 to play. It's not clear who the players are.

    Missouri has won 14 straight home openers, but those obviously have come against much weaker competition. Alabama is tied for the highest-ranked opponent ever in a Tigers opener. Mizzou enters on a seven-game ATS losing streak overall.

    Alabama has been at least a 28-point "true" road favorite just twice since 2010 and both in 2018 (going 1-1 ATS): The Tide were -35 at Arkansas on Oct. 6 that year and won 65-31; they were -29.5 two weeks later at Tennessee and rolled 58-21.

    Who wins every NFL game this week? And which teams cover more than 50 percent of the time? Get picks here from the SportsLine Projection Model, which simulates every NFL game 10,000 times and ranked in the Top 10 on NFLPickWatch three of the past four years on straight-up NFL picks.

    SportsLine Staff

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