How did Vegas get Pitt, Penn State point spreads so wrong? taken in University Park, Pa. (NCAA)

Mark Selders / Penn State Athletics

Jaylen Reed celebrates a third-down stop for the Penn State defense during Saturday's win over Northwestern at Beaver Stadium.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Pitt was favored by 22 points over Georgia Tech on Saturday -- and lost, 26-21.

Penn State was favored by 25 points over Northwestern -- and won, 17-7, thanks to a fourth-and-goal at the 1 stop that probably would have made the final 17-14.

It's usually pretty dumb to challenge Vegas on sports lines, because they're gonna clean up the majority of the time.

But boy, did Vegas ever blow those two college football lines Saturday.

The Penn State-Northwestern line was absurd to begin with, rising as high as 26.5 last week. I wrote here that the line was hard to believe, while wondering if Northwestern could really be that bad?

That 26.5 number looked to me like one of the worst lines of the season, and sure enough, it was.

But the Pitt line turned out to be an absolute joke. It's ridiculously hard to lose a game in which you're favored by 22 points, but the Panthers did just that.

OK, so why were those lines so far off? Here are three reasons:

1. Pride

Computer models that help generate point spreads cannot take the human element into account. And certainly not this particular human element.

Georgia Tech just fired head coach Geoff Collins and AD Todd Stansbury last Monday. Collins' record with the Yellow Jackets was an abysmal 10-28 over three-plus seasons, including 1-3 this year. There's no doubt he had to go.

But there's always a really good chance that the players on a team will respond in a big way the next game after their coach is fired. Sure, it can go the other way, too, with the team just quitting on the season. But more often than not, there seems to be a jolt of energy injected into college players after a coach is ousted, as they come together joined by a greater sense of urgency and determination or whatever the case may be.

Pitt may have been expecting a Georgia Tech team that would quit, and instead got an inspired group of Yellow Jackets ready to fight.

The same thing happened with Penn State and Northwestern. The Wildcats had already lost to an FCS team (Southern Illinois), a MAC team (Miami, Ohio) and a bad ACC team (Duke), all at home.

Do you know what kind of kids get into Northwestern? Super smart kids with a tremendous level of dedication and pride. The kind of kids who aren't just simply going to quit. The Wildcats' coach, Pat Fitzgerald, has spent his entire adult life at the school as a player and coach, and he epitomizes grit, hard work and overcoming obstacles. He has one of the toughest jobs in America, and yet Fitzgerald has done really good things at times.

When I first saw the line had hit 26.5, I thought it was absolutely outrageous. But you know, a number of sports writers actually picked Penn State to cover, which just seemed nuts. They were totally writing off Northwestern, which, yeah, has a terrible offense, but also has shown a pretty decent defense.

2. Conference

These were conference games. And especially on the Pitt-Georgia Tech side, these teams know each other well.

The Panthers and Yellow Yackets play every year. Sure, Pitt won last season, 52-21, but that was with Kenny Pickett and Jordan Addison. The Yellow Jackets know what Pitt wants to do, they have lots and lots of film on it, and so those kind of opponents are always easier to prepare for.

OK, sure, Georgia Tech isn't any good this year, and so you'd think Pitt still would have won comfortably. But by 22 points after the coach was fired with the whole pride thing mentioned above?

Flat out losing the game, therefore, was astonishing.

Penn State and Northwestern had not met in five years prior to Saturday. But they are still in the same conference, so the Wildcats can always scout the Lions better than they could a non-con opponent simply through film of common opponents.

Penn State did win the last matchup, 31-7, but Northwestern and Fitzgerald had beaten the Lions and James Franklin in the two prior meetings in 2015 and '14.

You couple the pride and conference factors together, and again, it seems crazy that the respective point spreads were so high.

3. Rain

This is a big reason why both games were so close. Because it was super soggy and all-around yucky at Acrisure Stadium and Beaver Stadium.

Rain and field conditions are always a great equalizer, so it stood to reason that both games stood a strong chance of being closer than those big point spreads.

Those lines came out before we knew for sure that it would be pouring in both places, and when we had predictable weather forecasts, the lines didn't exactly drop.

Both, obviously, should have.

PENN STATE IN THE POLLS

The Lions moved up one spot to No. 10 this week in both the AP and coaches polls.

Michigan remains No. 4, so as long as the Wolverines win at Indiana this week, that will be a top 10 matchup when Penn State visits Ann Arbor in two weeks.

CHRYST OUT AT WISCONSIN

In some surprising news, Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst has been fired, according to ESPN. Chryst was Pitt's head coach from 2012-14, going 19-19, before leaving for the Wisconsin job,

The Badgers are 2-3 overall and 0-2 in the Big Ten, including Saturday's embarrassing 34-10 home loss to Illinois. They also lost at home earlier this year to Washington State, 17-14, and were trounced at Ohio State last week, 52-21.

Chryst is a good coach who did some good things in Madison, going 67-26 in eight seasons. He lost to Penn State in the 2016 Big Ten championship game, but also won the Cotton Bowl that year, the Orange Bowl the next season and got to the Rose Bowl in 2019.

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