Week 4 Expert College Football Picks – 247Sports.com 
Last week, the SEC took center stage with two of the biggest games on the Week 3 slate in LSU’s clobbering of Auburn and Ole Miss’ upset of Alabama in Tuscaloosa – a potentially season-altering win.
While the SEC has a couple of intriguing contests this weekend in Arkansas and Texas A&M’s neutral-site matchup in Arlington and Auburn’s date with Mississippi State, it’s the Pac-12 who takes center stage Saturday. UCLA visits Arizona in a matchup of Pac-12 South unbeaten while Utah looks to stay undefeated against high-flying, one-loss Oregon. The nightcap pits USC against Arizona State, home underdogs against the Trojans.
The model, which had an admittedly rough week last week, projects the underdog in each of those primetime Pac-12 games to cover and win. UCLA (-3.5) and USC (-5.5) are favorites while Utah (+11) is a double-digit underdog. But so far the model hasn’t been nearly as impressed with Oregon as most fans and experts have.
The least squares optimization model used here to project the outcome of every FBS game, which assigns a rating to each FBS team to come up with these projections, went just 21-30-1 (.413) against the spread last week and 54-15 (.782) straight up. That brings the model’s record on the season to 89-95-3 (.484) against the spread and 183-47 (.796) straight up.
In Power 5 games, the model has performed slightly better. It is exactly .500 against the spread in Power 5 games, going 65-65-1 and 131-22 (.856) straight up. That includes a 17-23 (.425) mark against the spread last week and a 37-9 (.804) record straight up.
As for the aforementioned SEC matchups, the model has Texas A&M (-7.5) also covering and winning while calling for Mississippi State (+1.5) to do the same. Also in the SEC, Florida (-1.5) is projected to cover and win at home against Tennessee.
In notable games outside the SEC and Pac-12, Oklahoma State (-3) is projected to win and cover on the road against a 1-2 Texas team that sorely needs a win with games away from Austin against TCU and Oklahoma immediately following this one. Meanwhile, BYU (+5) and Duke (+9) are among the underdogs projected to win this week, against Michigan and Georgia Tech, respectively. Below are those and the rest of the model’s picks for this week.
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