Oddsmakers Now View South Carolina As Favorite Over Kentucky

South Carolina's football team began the week as a slight underdog ahead of their matchup with Kentucky, but those odds have completely flipped.

Whenever a spread line is set for a football game by a sportsbook, you rarely ever see that spread move more than two whole points in either direction. Sometimes, however, that kind of drastic movement can indeed take place, and when it does, it's something that everyone should pay attention to.

At the beginning of this week, South Carolina was listed by most sportsbooks as anywhere from a 1 to 3 point underdog against the Kentucky Wildcats. As of Friday evening, almost every single major sportsbook has the Gamecocks now listed as anywhere from a 1.5 to a 2.5 point favorite over their SEC counterpart. Quick math says that some of these lines have shifted as many as 4.5 to 5.5 points! So what should we make of this line movement?

One thing we have to keep in mind is although some fans believe that oddsmakers are biased against their favorite team, these people don't just throw darts on a dartboard to set their odds. As a matter of fact, most have well-connected sources all across these sports leagues, and typically find out information long before the casual fan and some beat reporters as well. 

Only a couple of different factors can cause a major shift in the spread: a change in the weather forecast that favors one team (think we can rule this out for sure), and a specific player being available or unavailable. Since these spreads have shifted in the Gamecocks favor, we can quickly deduce that whatever is going on will supposedly increase South Carolina's chances to win on Saturday night. If it is the return of a particular player for the Gamecocks or one player for Kentucky being ruled out, we likely won't find out anything until tomorrow morning at the earliest.

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