With a spread like this, clearly the oddsmakers believe these teams are evenly matched. Or at least that's what they're trying to lead us to believe. We feel that Cincinnati though could or should in fact be a bigger favorite here at home. Remember, the Bearcats won at Pittsburgh last season and with 15 starters, this is a much improved team. Pittsburgh is off a 55-24 win over Kent as a 24-point favorite at home, but now on the road, we believe the Panthers will struggle. Cincinnati is off a 38-20 win over Towson at home, unable to cover the large 34.5-point spread. In our opinion, the home-field advantage can't be overlooked as a very real deciding factor. Pittsburgh got a big game out of Eli Holstein last week, but we don't see him duplicating that here against this much more difficult Bearcats' defensive unit. Cincinnati finished with 658 total yards of offense last week and the defense forced one fumble and posted three sacks. Up against a Pitt defense which returned only 4 starters, look for the Bearcats to find a way to get the job done in front of the hometown crowd in Week 2.