Penn State vs. Bowling Green score prediction by expert college football model

What the analytics predict as the Penn State Nittany Lions return home against the Bowling Green Falcons in this Week 2 college football game.

Penn State Nittany Lions vs. Bowling Green Falcons Prediction / Ben Queen-Imagn Images

Coming off a statement victory on the road against a rival, the No. 8 Penn State Nittany Lions return home to Happy Valley to square off against the MAC challenger Bowling Green Falcons in college football's Week 2 action on Saturday.

Drew Allar appears to have found his deep ball after the former 5-star quarterback went 11 of 17 for 216 yards and threw 3 touchdown passes in the Nittany Lions' 34-12 win over West Virginia in the opener, while Nicholas Singleton added another score on 114 yards rushing.

Terion Stewart ran for 161 yards and 3 touchdowns for Bowling Green in a 41-17 victory over Fordham a week ago as the Falcons ran for 305 yards and posted a 9.2 yard per carry average.

That unit will go against a Penn State run-stop that held the Mountaineers to 2.3 yards per touch in Week 1 and currently ranks fifth among teams nationally that allowed at least 75 yards.

What can we expect from this matchup? For that, let's turn to the SP+ prediction model to get a preview of how Penn State and Bowling Green compare heading into this Week 2 game.

Penn State vs. Bowling Green prediction

As expected, the simulations strongly favor the Nittany Lions to hold firm at home this weekend.

SP+ predicts that Penn State will defeat Bowling Green by a projected score of 42 to 8 and to win the game by an expected 34.9 points, effectively a five-touchdown win.

The model gives Penn State a virtual guarantee to win at 99 percent outright.

SP+ is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency” that attempts to predict game outcomes by measuring “the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.”

Point spread

Penn State is a 35.5 point favorite against Bowling Green, according to the lines at FanDuel Sportsbook, which set the total at 48.5 points for the game.

If you're using this projection to bet on the game, you should take...

• Bowling Green +35.5
• Bet over 48.5 points

Computer prediction

Other analytic models also favor the Nittany Lions to easily win the game.

That includes the College Football Power Index, a computer prediction model that uses data points from both teams to simulate games 20,000 times to pick winners.

Penn State is projected to win the game in an overwhelming 97.6 percent of the computer's simulations, while Bowling Green comes out the winner in the remaining 2.4 percent of sims.

The computer estimates that Penn State will be 30.6 points better than Bowling Green on the same field in both teams' current composition, not enough to cover this line.

Penn State will win 10.7 games this season, according to the computer's calculations, and is tied for first-place among Big Ten teams with a 34.5 percent chance to win the conference championship.

Ohio State has the same percentage chance to win the Big Ten; the Nittany Lions host the Buckeyes on Nov. 2 this season.

The index projects Bowling Green will win 5.9 games this season with a 59.2 percent chance to become bowl eligible and with a 7.8 percent chance to win the MAC championship.

Penn State vs. Bowling Green game time, schedule

When: Sat., Sept. 7
Time: 12 p.m. Eastern
TV: Big Ten Network

Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.

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