How to watch Clemson at Texas: Picks, odds with Longhorns heavily favored in College Football Playoff game

Texas lost to Georgia in overtime in the SEC Championship Game, but only fell to No.

5 in the College Football Playoff seeding.

As a result, the Longhorns get ACC champion Clemson in the first round and are the biggest favorite of the round, opening at -10.5 points and since moving to -12.5.

On paper, it makes sense the 5-12 matchup would be the widest spread of the bunch.

This is the matchup that causes a ton of upsets in the college basketball tournament, but will that apply in college football as well? These two teams have something in common in that they both made Georgia look good.

For as up and down as the Bulldogs have been this season, Georgias 34-3 season-opening win against Clemson and its 30-15 win in Texas are arguably the Bulldogs two best performances this year.

Texas looked much better in the SEC title game, but still fell short.

Applying the transitive property to college football is usually a silly idea, but the Longhorns were far more competitive, even the first time around, than Clemson was against Georgia.

Advertisement Clemson is coming off its best win of the season though.

The Tigers didnt have a top-25 win before taking down SMU in the ACC title game, a contest the Tigers needed help to even reach.

Funny enough, that means Clemson has more top-25 wins than Texas.

The Longhorns finished the regular season without a win against a team in the final CFP rankings.

Texas played Michigan, Oklahoma, Vanderbilt and Texas A&M when those teams were ranked in the AP Top 25, but they all fell out of the rankings by the end of the season.

The Longhorns were part of the four-team field last year and are the only team of that group, which included Michigan, Washington and Alabama, to make the 12-team field this year.

On top of that experience, Texas has a dynamic receiving group, a veteran quarterback in Quinn Ewers (plus an uber-talented backup in Arch Manning) and one of the best defenses in the country.

Texas is second in the country in scoring defense (12.5 points) and goes up against a Clemson offense that ranks 12th in the country in total yards per game (454.9).

The Tigers have been a strong offense overall but struggled against the two other SEC teams on their schedule.

Georgia held the Tigers to three points, and South Carolina won 17-14 at Clemson to close out the regular season.

This is the first-ever matchup between these two programs.

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