Northwestern-Mississippi State Gator Bowl odds: Wildcats two-point favorites after starting as underdogs

Degenerates: Remember about a month ago when the line for the Gator Bowl came out, and Mississippi State was the favorite, and we all got ourselves up in a lil tizzy about the fact that Mississippi State was the favorite? Well, tizz no more: Northwestern is now favored by up to two points with two days left until the bowl game.

You see lines shift as betting comes in, but this is a pretty impressive one. The line opened at Mississippi State -2.5, but now, books are listing Northwestern as 1-point favorites, 1.5-point favorites, or 2-point favorites. That's a 4.5-point swing in some cases.

There's a few reasons for this: first of all, although I'm not willing to predict a Northwestern win, the stats certainly seem to portray Northwestern as the better team in this game. They have more wins overall, more wins against good teams, were closer in their losses, and closed their season with a pair of wins while MSU lost four of five. Bettors realized that and probably bet on Northwestern. Second, while most lines are only up for a few days, bowl odds have an entire month to adjust to how bets are coming in, which allows for a swing as big as Northwestern's.

So hey, Northwestern is a No. 20 team favored in a bowl game. I'd snort at that, with a snarky "how can this go wrong" joke, but Northwestern is 11-1 against the spread this year, and covered all six times they were favored. Here's to that shifting to 12-1 rather than 11-2.