The 2018 college football season opens up this week with a number of great betting opportunities at BetAnySports. A few of the top-ranked programs in the nation will be tested right out of the gate, while a few others will be tested to cover huge spreads against teams they should easily get by. Each of these scenarios can play right into the hands of sports bettors if you know where and how to look.

Starting this Thursday night in the Big Ten, is a matchup between the Northwestern Wildcats and the Purdue Boilermakers. Neither team is expected to be a factor in the Big Ten West Division title race behind Wisconsin as a clear favorite, but each team will be looking for an early conference win to stay pointed in the right direction. Purdue is listed as a three-point favorite at home, but it has lost six of its last seven meetings against the Wildcats straight-up. The total has stayed UNDER in eight of the last 11 meetings and it has been set at 49 points for Thursday night.

Moving to Saturday’s early afternoon college football slate, one of the more interesting matchups on BetAnySports’ board pits the Big 12’s Texas Longhorns on the road against the Big Ten’s Maryland Terrapins in a 12 p.m. start at FedEx Field. The No. 23-ranked Longhorns are listed as 13-point road favorites in what they hope to be a fast start to a very successful season. Texas is a +300 second-favorite behind Oklahoma to win the Big 12 this season, but it has been plagued with slow starts out of the gate the past few seasons. The good news for bettors is a 9-3 record against the spread in the Longhorns’ last 12 games and they are 5-1 ATS in their last six games on the road.

The biggest matchup in Week 1 is a 3:30 p.m. tilt between the No. 6 Washington Huskies as the clear favorite to win the Pac-12 and the SEC’s No. 9 Auburn Tigers, who are expected to be Alabama’s main competition for the conference’s West Division title. The Tigers are favored by 2.5 points at home with BetAnySports and the early general betting consensus is leaning their way at 62 percent. The betting consensus for the 48.5-point total line in this Week 1 showdown is slightly leaning towards the UNDER at 56 percent.