- Ole Miss is a 7-point favorite over Louisville at Bovada for Sunday’s Music City Kickoff in Nashville, up from 6.5 at the open.
- The matchup is Week 1’s only game between two AP-ranked teams, No. 9 Ole Miss against No. 24 Louisville.
- Louisville’s No. 24 spot is the program’s first preseason ranking since 2017, the Lamar Jackson era.
- The total sits at 55 points, well under the 67 the teams combined for in their last meeting.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Ole Miss is a 7-point favorite over Louisville for Sunday’s Liberty Mutual Music City Kickoff at Nissan Stadium, the only meeting this week between two AP Top 25 teams.
The Number
No. 9 Ole Miss is favored by a touchdown over No. 24 Louisville at Bovada, where the spread moved from 6.5 to 7 points at the end of August, and BetOnline still has the Rebels at -6.5.
Ole Miss’s moneyline sits at -260 to Louisville’s +215, in from -270 and +220 at the open, a gap that lines up with the two teams’ 15-spot difference in the preseason AP Top 25. Laying that price to back the favorite outright costs more than double the potential return, the cost of trusting the higher-ranked team to hold up on a neutral field.
The game anchors the first Sunday of a legal college football betting season already dense with early-week action, and it is the lone ranked-versus-ranked matchup on this week’s board, a distinction that has held since Ole Miss and Louisville both landed in the preseason AP Top 25 last month.
A Rematch, Not A First Look
The teams have met once before, also at a neutral site to open a season: Ole Miss beat Louisville 43-24 in the 2021 Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game in Atlanta. That result put 67 points on the board and a 19-point final margin, both well clear of Sunday’s number, which suggests the market is pricing a tighter, lower-scoring rematch rather than a repeat of the shootout.
Louisville enters off a third straight nine-win season and opens a year ranked for the first time since Lamar Jackson’s final season in 2017. The Cardinals’ preseason Top 25 spot is part of why the total sits so far under that 2021 output — a Louisville team the market treats as a ranked opponent is priced to keep this one closer to the spread than to a blowout.
The Total
Sunday’s total sits at 55 points at Bovada, a half-point below where it opened, meaning the board expects a competitive, lower-scoring opener compared with the teams’ only other head-to-head. A number 12 points under the 2021 combined score reflects a Louisville side the market rates as more complete on both sides of the ball than the group Ole Miss beat by three scores five years ago.
Kickoff for the inaugural Music City Kickoff, one of the marquee neutral-site openers driving legal sports betting interest this month, is set for 6:30 p.m. CT Sunday at Nissan Stadium, airing nationally on ABC.
