Houston vs Cincinnati AAC Championship Picks and Predictions: Can Cincy Clinch?

A victory is all Cincinnati needs to get into the Playoff. While the Bearcats are certainly in a good position to pull it off, they may have trouble covering a large spread against Houston. Read on for our AAC Championship college football betting picks.

Douglas Farmer - Betting Analyst at Covers
Douglas Farmer • Betting Analyst
Dec 4, 2021 • 11:07 ET • 5 min read
Desmond Ridder Cincinnati Bearcats College Football
Photo By - USA TODAY Sports

Cincinnati is closer to the College Football Playoff than any Group of Five team before it. If the No. 4 Bearcats capture the American Athletic Conference on Saturday, they should punch their ticket to the postseason that matters. That possibility alone will add a little drama to a game with a double-digit spread.

Check out our free college football picks and predictions for Houston at Cincinnati on December 4, with kickoff set for 4:00 ET.

Houston vs Cincinnati odds

Odds via the Covers Line, an average comprised of odds from multiple sportsbooks.

The Bearcats began the week as 10.5-point favorites and are ending the week as 10.5-point favorites, but the line fell across the key number of 10 for a stretch on Monday. The total opened at 55.5 on Sunday and quickly fell to 53.5 at some books and 54.0 at others. By Wednesday, it had fallen further to 52.5 at most locations.

Use the live odds widget above to track any future line movements right up until kickoff and be sure to check out the full college football odds before placing your bets.

Houston vs Cincinnati predictions

Predictions made on 12/02/2021 at 2:00 p.m. ET.
Click on each prediction to jump to the full analysis.

Best college football bonuses

If you're signing up for a new sportsbook for the 2021 college football season, here are two of the best welcome bonuses available:

USA: Sign up with Caesars and get your first bet matched up to $1,001! Claim Now

Canada: Get a 100%-matched sign-up bonus (up to $400) at BetVictor. Claim Now

Houston vs Cincinnati game info

Location: Nippert Stadium, Cincinnati, OH
Date: Saturday, December 4, 2021
Time: 4:00 p.m. ET
TV: ABC

Houston vs Cincinnati betting preview

Weather

Be sure to monitor the gametime conditions with our NCAA football weather info.

Key injuries

Houston: KeSean Carter WR (Questionable), Sedrick Williams DL (Out).
Cincinnati: Cole Smith K (Questionable), Michael Young WR (Questionable).
Find our latest NCAA football injury reports.

Betting trend to know

Houston is 2-0 ATS as an underdog this season, and Cincinnati is 2-4 ATS in its last six games. Find more NCAA betting trends for Houston vs. Cincinnati.

Houston vs Cincinnati picks and predictions

Our predictions are compiled from the analysis of the spread and total and are indications of where we are leaning for this game.
Our best bet is the play that we like the most for this game, which we would actually put some of our bankroll behind.

Neither team excels at covering the spread as one might expect from two opponents in a conference championship, both going 7-5 against the spread this season. Nationally, though, one of them is perceived in far more favorable terms than the other, despite the latter having its own strong season.

The Cougars have won 11 straight games, something one might think would earn more praise than it has. Their one loss came in the season opener, a game that Houston led 21-7 at halftime before giving up 31 unanswered points in the second half. Since then, the Cougars have rarely worried. East Carolina took them to overtime, but only two other games were one-possession games: against triple-option clock-devouring Navy and against the third-best team in the conference, SMU.

Yet Houston remains undervalued in the public view.

On the other sideline, Cincinnati knows it is in the Playoff with a win. There may be some late Saturday consternation about No. 5 Oklahoma State leapfrogging the Bearcats with a win against No. 9 Baylor in the Big 12 title game, but three other games could render that hand-wringing moot if it is justified at all in the first place. Cincinnati is in if it wins.

A blowout is no longer necessary. The Bearcats do not need to try to run up the score. They need to win. That is fortunate for them because they struggled to run up the score throughout the second half of the season, frustrating backers with a four-game losing streak ATS. Its two recent covers were against SMU and East Carolina, and neither is on par with Houston.

Houston has shown fight all season, while Cincinnati has simply shown an ability to get by.

Prediction: Houston +10.5 (-110)

Again, the Bearcats do not need to run this up, nor have they been strong in that regard of late. Five of Cincinnati’s last six games have gone Under the total. And at the risk of relying too heavily on a small sample set, two of Houston’s last three games have also gone Under the total.

That may explain why this total fell from 55.5 early in the week to 52.5, but those falls can logically go only so far.

With the Bearcats’ dominant defense giving up only 15.8 points per game this season, good for No. 3 in the country, and 4.29 yards per play, also No. 3 in the country, this game could quickly become a grind. Cincinnati would be fine with that, as a win of any stripe is all it needs.

Prediction: Under 52.5 (-110)

Some come here for fun, others come for profit. This is a “for-profit” suggestion. It will not be that much fun unless you consider making money fun.

The last two weeks aside, Cincinnati cannot be counted on to cover a spread, even if it is the more talented team in this matchup. Nonetheless, when a talent disparity is this clear — Houston is good, maybe even very good, but the Bearcats are head and shoulders above the rest of the Group of Five — good faith cannot allow suggesting you back the underdog in a championship game.

The only prudent choice is to assume Cincinnati will qualify for the Playoff. That is to say, pick the Bearcats to win, nothing more.

Looking at a favorite’s money line of -450, that bet can require a chunk of your bankroll, but in a week with only 11 games — don’t forget about the USC-Cal comedy to end Saturday night — you can justify tying up more of your bankroll with such short odds.

Pick: Cincinnati ML (-450)

College football parlays

Did you know that if you parlayed our Houston vs. Cincinnati picks, you could win $34.55 on a $10 bet?

Use our college football parlay calculator to create your own parlays and see their potential payouts.

Pages related to this topic

Douglas Farmer
Betting Analyst

Douglas Farmer spends his days thinking about college football and his nights thinking about the NBA. His betting habits and coverage follow that same pattern. He covered Notre Dame football for various outlets from 2008 to 2024, most notably spending eight seasons as NBC Sports’ beat writer on the Irish. That was also when his gambling focus took off. Knowing there were veteran beat writers with three decades more experience than he had, Douglas found his niche by best recognizing Notre Dame’s standing in each year’s national landscape, a complex tapestry most easily understood and remembered via betting odds.

In 2021, that interest created a freelance opportunity with Covers, a role that eventually led to Douglas joining the company full-time in 2023. In the fall, Douglas will place five or six dozen bets each week, a disproportionate amount via BetRivers because the operator tends to have lines slightly different than the rest of the market. The same can be said of Circa Sports’ futures markets.

While Douglas is an avid NBA fan and covers the league throughout the year, the vast majority of his bets are on college football, because that is the biggest key to sports betting: Know what you do not know.

Popular Content

Legal Canadian sports betting

Best Canadian betting sites Ontario sports betting
Covers 25 Years Logo Established in 1995,
Covers is the world
leader in sports
betting information.
Covers is verified safe by: Evalon Logo GPWA Logo GDPR Logo GeoTrust Logo Evalon Logo