LSU Facing Biggest Underdog Spread of Defending National Champion in 40 Years

The 2019 season was a storybook year for LSU. The team went undefeated in Ed Orgeron's third full season as head coach, quarterback Joe Burrow won the Heisman, and the Tigers won the College Football Playoff Championship at the end of their run.

With a graduating class like that of the 2019 Tigers, one deemed the greatest college football team ever by several pundits, the next season is almost guaranteed to be a let-down year. The spread against Alabama this week shows just how drastically things have changed in one season.

At 3-4, LSU will host an undefeated, No. 1-ranked Alabama team that is raring for some revenge. Even with the Tigers at home, they're 29.5-point underdogs, the largest deficit for a defending national champion in 40 years.

The Tigers have nothing to be ashamed of, they lost a ton of talent to the draft, and the program should be fine in a couple of seasons at most. Even so, this is big news historically speaking.

With Nick Saban set to return from his Covid-19 layoff, the major question on Saturday probably won't be about whether or not LSU can win, but if they can keep this game close and prove this spread wrong. If they can do that, the program will have at least shown its mettle once again.

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Michael Obermuller is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Michael Obermuller also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username king_mizzard. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in their articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.