Ball State Cardinals @ Western Michigan Broncos (-10) Free Pick: The Ball State Cardinals are 1-10 straight up and 5-6 ATS. As a 9.5 or higher underdog they are 4-1 ATS on the season. Ball State has 10 losses, but in 6 of those games they’ve finished within a touchdown of their opponent.

This line probably is probably is a little bit inflated, I have to be honest. I don’t know if you can quite get as similar as 1-10 Ball State, but the Broncos have played a couple poor teams with bad records, and while they’ve come out on top in a few, they’ve won against the spread only twice as favorites this year. One of those wins was against Miami of Ohio, almost if not just as sub-par as Ball State.

Ball State’s strongest part of their offensive attack is their rushing game. That doesn’t seem to bother Western Michigan much. What I mean by that is that Western Michigan usually gets out-rushed, and it’s made no difference in winning or losing games – they’ve won and lost while getting pummeled on the ground. What seemingly hurts the Broncos is when a team can get them through the air. In each of their last two losses, they were out-gained through the air. They lost both ATS as well.

Western Michigan can throw the ball well, they have an extra 4 days to prepare for this game on Tuesday, and that should be enough if being the better team wasn’t enough already. It’s not a gimmie, as Ball State has owned this match-up over the last 5 years (4-1 SU and ATS) but fighting for their 6th win, I think Western Michigan wins by double digits.