One of the annual rites of summer passage is investing in college football futures. Many gravitate towards picking conference champs or national title winners, but I prefer to look at season win over/unders.

Several caught my eye this year as worthy of investment. Here are six I am pretty confident in sharing. The line totals come from VegasInsider.com as of June 26th. Other books might have different numbers, so if you are serious about gambling I suggest shopping around.

Iowa (8.5 wins)

I look at this Iowa team, one which was 12-0 last year against an arguably better schedule than the one they face this fall, and I try to see why the line is so low at just 8.5 wins.

C.J. Beathard is the best returning QB in the Big 10, certainly in terms of NFL potential. Granted that’s not saying much, but Beathard is smart, accurate and well-seasoned. He just lacks playmakers on the outside. Fortunately the Hawkeyes are deep at RB and return the three best run blockers up front from a team that ran pretty much at will against most opponents. I smell a huge season from Leshun Daniels at tailback.

Eight starters return on defense, including arguably the best CB tandem in the nation in Desmond King and Greg Mabin. Josey Jewell is a great college MLB, and the guys in front of him, notably Jaleel Johnson, do a fine job winning the line of scrimmage battles.

It’s almost inconceivable they don’t sweep the non-conference schedule. They should sweep the B1G West schedule, too. The three best opponents all come to Iowa City, and the Hawkeyes should defeat at least one of Wisconsin, Michigan and Nebraska. They might not even need to do that to top 8.5 wins, but it just adds to the seemingly artificial low line.

The only logical conclusion is the bookmakers are overreacting to the abysmal Rose Bowl loss to Stanford and the lifeless offense in the B1G Championship game loss to Michigan State. Make them pay; this Hawkeyes team rolls to no fewer than 10 wins if Beathard stays healthy.

North Texas (2 wins)

The Mean Green were arguably the worst team in the country last year, finishing 1-11 with the 122^nd ranked scoring defense and the 124th ranked scoring offense. New Head Coach Seth Littrell had a lot of success as North Carolina’s offensive guru, but there is no Marquise Williams, Bug Howard, Ryan Switzer or Quinshad Davis here.

In fact, North Texas brings back almost nobody who would have even appeared on UNC’s two-deep last fall other than a pair of RBs in Jeffrey Wilson and Willy Ivery. The best lineman, center Kaydon Kirby, left the program in the spring. An offense built to hammer the run will now try and air it out, as new Offensive Coordinator Graham Harrell is a former Mike Leach QB and is expected to implement that spray gun style aerial assault in Denton.

It’s almost inconceivable the Mean Green top 2 wins. They should--should--beat Bethune-Cookman in the opener. After that…the two most obvious winnable games are both on the road, at Army and UTSA. They don’t get C-USA lightweights FIU or Charlotte on the schedule. It’s hard to have sureness in a 37-year-old rookie head coach making a radical scheme change with so little returning talent. At worst this seems like a push with the under bet.

Notre Dame (9.5 wins)

Brian Kelly’s Irish are firmly established as a stalwart Top 20 team. They’ve got offensive skill position talent in droves; their second-team offense could probably win a lot of games. The wideouts and running backs lack a lot of experience but there is so much potential. Both QBs (Malik Zaire and Deshone Kizer) are capable of special things at the college level.

The issue for the Irish is replacing a great deal of top-end talent. On the offensive line, both Ronnie Stanley and Nick Martin are now in the NFL. They manned left tackle and center, the two most critical positions. It’s now a very young group up front, though Notre Dame is perennially one of the best-coached lines. They should be fine, save for some early-season growing pains.

It’s the defensive losses that threaten to keep Notre Dame from double-digit wins. Sheldon Day, Jaylon Smith and friends were a fantastic, cohesive group. There are sprinkles of experience and a lot of athletic potential, but they’re very green, especially in the back end.

Talented opposing offenses should find a lot more success against this Notre Dame team. Yet one of the reasons why I like the Irish to beat the 9.5 win line is their very favorable schedule. The toughest teams on the docket--Michigan State, Stanford, USC, even North Carolina State--are all replacing QBs departed to the NFL and have significant questions about how well they can replace them. The offense should be strong enough to cover for a defensive letdown against most opponents. They avoid all the better ACC teams in that “conference” portion of their slate, too. I’ll be surprised if the savvy Kelly doesn’t guide the Irish to at least 10 wins.

South Carolina (5 wins)

A new era has begun in Columbia. Steve Spurrier quit in the midst of a disastrous 3-9 campaign. Now Will Muschamp takes over, and he unfortunately doesn’t have a lot to work with in the tough SEC.

The Gamecocks have just two returning starters on offense and a whole lot of questions at QB, WR and RB. They also lost the best player on the defense, do-everything LB Skai Moore, to a neck injury. That defense struggled to put pressure on opposing QBs and could not get off the field on third downs (122^nd in nation).

There are four nonconference games on the docket: East Carolina, UMass, Western Carolina and Clemson. They’re certainly not beating Clemson and ECU is no gimmie. UMass might be the worst FBS-level team and Western Carolina should be a win. Then again, the Catamounts pounded a Citadel team that beat the Gamecocks last year, so….

In order to top five, South Carolina will have to win at least 3 SEC games. The two most winnable games on paper are the opener at Vanderbilt and then at Kentucky three weeks later. And that’s why the under is the smart bet here; the two most favorable matchups both come on the road, and early in the season. For a team with almost no experience at any impact position and a brand new coaching staff, it’s tough to see them coalescing quickly. I’ll be very surprised if South Carolina wins 4, let alone 6 to cover the over.

Syracuse (4 wins)

In the spirit of “allow me to include a positive qualifier before I trash the subject”, I am a big fan of new Head Coach Dino Babers. His innovate, go-go offense has succeeded everywhere he’s gone, most recently Bowling Green.

The school colors might be similar, but Babers will find Syracuse a different sort of challenge. The passing offense last year ranked 119th in the nation. There are just 128 teams. The best part of that offense was the line, and now it must replace both tackles. QB Eric Dungey suffered at least 2 concussions and missed the final few games. He could be very good in Babers’ system, but the talent around him is vastly inferior to what the new coach had at BGSU, and staying on the field with his playing style could be a major issue.

Defensively, the Orange are switching schemes. Given they finished 105th in yards per play, that’s probably a good idea. The problem is the holdovers at linebacker and in the secondary all fit the old scheme, not the new Cover-2. The 2-deep on the line features freshmen and sophomores, save an FCS transfer. The best player on the team is kicker Cole Murphy.

A look at the schedule deals the cold reality. The last game Syracuse plays that any reasonable person could consider winnable is at Wake Forest on Oct. 8. To top 4 wins, they’ll have to win that one, plus four of the five predecessors. They’re not winning four against Louisville, South Florida, Notre Dame (all at home) or at UConn. I’ll give them the W in the opener against Colgate. I won’t give them greater than 2 more with any level of confidence.

Western Michigan (8.5 wins)

The Broncos have Rowed the Boat to yearly MAC contender under energetic young coach P.J. Fleck. Last year they rebounded from losing three of the first four, including a competitive joust with visiting heavyweight Michigan State, and scraped up a 7-5 regular-season finish.

The Spartans and Ohio State are off the 2016 schedule, replaced by Northwestern and Illinois from the Big Ten. It says here Western Michigan will win at least one of those, if not both. A grudge match with Georgia Southern, who shocked them a year ago, comes in Kalamazoo. With UNC Central also on the non-conference slate, that’s no fewer than 3 wins heading into the difficult MAC West.

Can the Broncos wrangle six wins in eight MAC games? They did it last year, and that was with the toughest conference games on the road. This year they get Toledo and Northern Illinois at home. They’ve got the best QB/WR tandem in the conference in Zach Terrell and Corey Davis, a potential NFL first-round pick. While there is some defensive turnover, the new starters all have a lot of real game experience and six of the top nine tacklers return. Darius Phillips, who is also a pretty strong CB, spearheads one of the best special teams units in the nation. If they can split, or sweep, versus the fellow MAC West favorites, Fleck has himself a 10-win team. I like the over.