Notre Dame vs. Stanford odds, spread, lines: Week 7 college football picks, predictions by computer model

College football expert picks, predictions for Notre Dame vs. Stanford on the Week 7 schedule this Saturday

Two old rivals meet up under the eyes of Touchdown Jesus when Notre Dame hosts Stanford in college football's Week 7 action on Saturday.

Stanford has dropped four straight since Week 1, including a 1-point heartbreaker against Oregon State last weekend.

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Notre Dame has recovered nicely from that 0-2 start in Marcus Freeman's maiden season, winning three straight, including against a ranked BYU club in Vegas last Saturday, but the Irish remain unranked this week.

What do the experts think of the matchup? Let's see how the College Football Power Index computer prediction model projects the game.

Notre Dame vs. Stanford picks, predictions

Week 7 college football picks: Notre Dame vs. Stanford / USA Today Images

The computer is siding with the home team in a big way as Notre Dame has the strong 90.3 percent chance to defeat Stanford on Saturday.

By contrast, the Cardinal have the slim 9.7 percent shot to upset the Irish.

The oddsmakers are also going with the Fighting Irish, who come into the game as 16.5 point favorites, according to the lines at SI Sportsbook, which set the over/under mark at 52.5 points for the matchup.

Notre Dame checks in at No. 15 on the index's 131 college football rankings, a jump of 3 spots, and is projected to win 8.0 games this season by an expected margin of plus-13.5 points per game, highest among FBS independents.

Stanford is projected to win just 3.2 games this season as the No. 73 overall team on the computer rankings, and is one of four Pac-12 teams expected to be negative in the per-game scoring margin metric: minus-0.4 points per game, according to the computer.

College Football Power Index

Football Power Index (FPI) college football rankings and computer prediction model are a measure of team strength that predicts a team’s future performance.

Rankings and scores predictions are based on 20,000 simulations of a team’s season, using a combination of analytics, including scores to date, quality of opponents, and a team’s schedule.

College football rankings

According to AP top 25 poll

1. Georgia
2. Ohio State
3. Alabama
4. Clemson
5. Michigan
6. Tennessee
7. USC
8. Oklahoma State
9. Ole Miss
10. Penn State
11. UCLA
12. Oregon
13. TCU
14. Wake Forest
15. NC State
16. Mississippi State
17. Kansas State
18. Syracuse
19. Kansas
20. Utah
21. Cincinnati
T-22. Kentucky
T-22. Texas
24. Illinois
25. James Madison

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