Howard Defeats UNLV 43-40 In Stunning Upset

Published on September 3rd, 2017 1:52 pm EST
Written By: Dave Manuel
The start of the college football season is usually filled with what are essentially "warm-up" games for the top teams in the nation.

This trend has started to change somewhat in recent years (Michigan played Florida yesterday, while Alabama battled FSU), though the first week of the season is still filled with amazingly lopsided games involving ranked teams and schools that you have never heard of.

UNLV vs Howard was supposed to be a similar type of game, with UNLV putting in some work while posting a lopsided victory.

This didn't end up being the case.

Heading into the game, UNLV was a 45 point favorite to win. This means that, under normal circumstances, UNLV would be expected to win by a score of 55-10 or something similar.

In short, an absolute beat down.

In fact, UNLV actually paid Howard's football program $600,000 to play the game. This is standard practice in NCAA football, as great programs will pay smaller teams to show up and play. This is the price that must be paid for embarrassing a school on the national stage. Sure, you may end up losing 70-0, but at least your school got paid for it.

On Saturday evening, UNLV not only lost to Howard by a score of 43-40, but they also paid for the right to lose.

Howard, which was led by Caylin Newton (Cam Newton's little brother), ended up pulling out the breath-taking win. They were in it all game, as UNLV was never able to pull too far ahead. At one point, UNLV went up 12 points in the third quarter and it seemed as though things were righting themselves. That was, of course, until Howard stormed backed, eventually taking their final lead after Caylin Newton punched it in from 4 yards out.

So, not only did Howard EASILY cover the spread, but they also won the game outright.

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In case you were wondering, the odds for Howard to win outright were +78000, which means that a successful $100 wager on Howard to win outright would have yielded a total profit of $78,000.