College football betting, Week 1: Can Ohio State cover against Notre Dame? Plus five more picks.

Welcome to a weekly feature of Bet Chicago Sports, our college football betting primer: Each week, I’ll pick the game of the week, plus five other picks I like from across the country.

For Week 1, we’re going with Ohio State and Notre Dame as the game of the week over other good candidates like Oregon-Georgia and Utah-Florida. All three of those games will immediately shape the national title race and are worth watching, but it’s the matchup in Columbus that will leave one team with an inside track to the College Football Playoff and the other with completely zero margin for error.

So let’s seize on that energy and get off to a profitable start.

(Lines from Caesars Sportsbook as of Wednesday)

Game of the Week

No. 5 NOTRE DAME at No. 2 OHIO STATE (-17), 6:30 p.m., ABC: There’s no doubt the right team is favored in this one, and by something close to the right amount. Ohio State is at home, has the Heisman Trophy favorite in CJ Stroud and a completely loaded offense. Notre Dame has a new coach and a lot of uncertainty.

But 17 points seems too heavy to me. (It was 17½ earlier in the week, as Irish coach Marcus Freeman took note of). Notre Dame has lost just one regular-season game by more than 17 points in the past four seasons, so we’re simply not talking about a talent level that is that far short of any team in the nation, even the Buckeyes.

Throw in the fact that Ohio State has been better at the end of seasons under Ryan Day than at the beginning — not a bad thing, to be sure, but something that works in the Irish’s favor here — and it feels better to be taking the 17 than laying it.

The pick: Ohio State 38, Notre Dame 27

Best bets

BUFFALO (+24) at MARYLAND, 11 a.m., BTN: Maryland started the season strong last year but then wilted defensively in Big Ten play, giving up 34 or more points for seven consecutive games late in the season. To that defense the Terrapins return just four starters.

Buffalo has the opposite problem, an offense that disappeared at times last year and has just two starters back.

So what to make of this one? The Bulls’ defense and the Terps’ offense — still led by Taulia Tagovailoa — are strong points that will face each other while the unknowns square off when Buffalo has the ball. In any case, 24 points seems like too many to cover for a Maryland team that won just two games by that total last year, against FCS bottom-feeder Howard and in a bowl game against Virginia Tech without many of its normal players.

The pick: Maryland 34, Buffalo 20

ARIZONA at SAN DIEGO STATE (-6), 2:30 p.m., CBS: To say the Pac-12 Conference has some problems is understating it, with top brands USC and UCLA off to the Big Ten in a couple of years and a bunch of teams who haven’t seriously competed for championships in almost 20 years.

One way to crystallize the on-field issues is that the Mountain West had a winning record against the league last year, and some of the games weren’t even that competitive. One example was San Diego State’s 38-14 beatdown of Arizona in Tucson that set the table for a miserable 1-11 Wildcats season.

There’s some reason for optimism that Arizona will be better this year — they brought in some quality transfers like quarterback Jayden de Laura from Washington State. But the offensive line is still a problem, and to expect them to gel quickly enough to get a unit that was 120th nationally in scoring to compete with a top defensive outfit like the Aztecs’ seems to be asking too much.

The pick: San Diego State 28, Arizona 17

No. 23 CINCINNATI (+6½) at No. 19 ARKANSAS, 2:30 p.m., ESPN: The Bearcats clearly aren’t the same team they were last year, when Desmond Ridder’s offense and Sauce Gardner’s defense helped Cincinnati become the first non-Power Five team to crash the College Football Playoff.

But are we sure Arkansas is the same team that went 9-4, beating Texas, Texas A&M and Penn State? The Razorbacks do bring back KJ Jefferson at quarterback and Bumper Pool at linebacker, but much of their depth is new, and I can’t shake the feeling that last year was one of those situations where everything just went right. And if things don’t go right against Cincinnati, this is still a veteran team that is ready to show last year wasn’t a flash in the pan.

This is my weekly “boy I’ll have egg on my face if this goes wrong” upset pick.

The pick: Cincinnati 24, Arkansas 23

UTEP at No. 9 OKLAHOMA (-31½), 2:30 p.m., Fox: Speaking of teams that aren’t going to be the same, I present to you the Oklahoma Sooners.

Lincoln Riley went west. So did quarterback Caleb Williams, and the other heralded QB, Spencer Rattler, went east.

In are Brent Venables at coach and UCF transfer Dillon Gabriel at quarterback. It’s tough to predict exactly how this year goes at Oklahoma, though I still project them as the winner of the Big 12. But no matter what happens with tough games down the line, this feels like an opportunity to make a statement that OU with Venables is going to be just as formidable as OU with Riley — or Bob Stoops before him.

It might look a little different, but if Oklahoma wants to start this era off with a bang, this gigantic spread isn’t too big.

The pick: Oklahoma 52, UTEP 17

TEXAS STATE at NEVADA (-1), 4:30 p.m.: The new-look Wolf Pack, which new coach Ken Wilson has rebuilt with a bunch of transfers and just six returning starters, started its season with an unconvincing 23-12 Week 0 win at New Mexico State.

That continued an amazing trend in regards to this point spread: When Caesars Sportsbook first released the line in May, Nevada was favored by 10½ points. That quickly dwindled throughout the summer down to 5½ before last week’s game. Nevada’s subpar performance continued to get bettors’ attention, and the game went all the way down to a pick ‘em early this week before moving a point in the other direction.

I don’t love Nevada’s roster, but I fail to see how the Pack isn’t favored by more here. Texas State has its own set of issues — are we sure the Bobcats are much better than NMSU? — and is traveling across the country.

The pick: Nevada 28, Texas State 21

LAST YEAR: 56-29 straight up, 43-42 against the spread