Which College Football Betting Trends Can You Trust?
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Football is without a doubt the most popular sport in America to bet on. It’s easy to keep up with the games because of how infrequently they happen throughout the week, the seasons are short and games are played mostly on the weekends when everyone can focus their attention on them. The NFL is a bit easier to keep track of than college because there are fewer teams, fewer games, and the schedule is easier to follow.
However, the insanity of a college football Saturday is also what makes college football betting so much fun. Games span 15+ hours, meaning you can bet on a college football game just about any time. Maybe you’re new to college football betting or you might be struggling to make a profit. We can help with that. Here are a few college football betting trends that you can trust.
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Vegas Doesn’t Know Early
This is a weird thing to say, right? Acknowledging that Vegas actually might not have a grasp on a bet that they are offering. It seems too good to be true.
The fact is that early in the season, Vegas, like bettors, needs to figure out exactly how teams and players are going to be from one year to the next. Who expected Joe Burrow to come out after his freshmen season and put up the types of numbers he did in his Heisman campaign? Vegas wasn’t expecting it, and there are a lot of other things they aren’t expecting either.
They know which players teams lost and which players they gained, but at the end of the day, a lot of their calculations are based on what a team did the season before. They know expectations coming into a season, but expectations often aren’t reality and early in the season is the best time to take advantage of that fact. You should keep an eye out for incredibly high or incredibly low totals and look for point spreads that seem like they would have been good the previous season, but maybe not so much this season. Really, keep an eye on everything in the first few weeks and if you study up on teams, you’re going to be able to find a lot of ways to win early.
Second-Half Unders in Blowouts
College football is one of the best sports to live bet for a number of reasons. First of all, point spreads have a way of being astronomical, and there are cases where totals are set very high, but the teams that are playing are not of equal talent. Teams like Alabama, Clemson, LSU, etc., have a way of jumping out to huge early leads that also make it seem like the over is a shoo-in to hit.
What all of these teams have in common is that they pump the brakes once they have a huge lead, though. They bench starters for other players of great caliber, but they slow the game down. Their defenses continue to amaze, but their offenses don’t try to score as quickly.
As a result, totals also tend to trend down in the second halves of games like this. It may be 35-0 at the half and the second half total may be set at 28. That seems about right, but if the two teams playing are as uneven as the first-half score shows, the second half is all about the under.
If a bad team is struggling to put up points, they should continue to do so even against a second-string defense. So really, you’re relying on one team to do all the scoring. If they’re winning by enough they may call off the dogs.
Non-Power 5 Schools Don’t Make the Playoff
I’m counting Notre Dame as a Power 5 even though they aren’t because they would be a Power 5 if they elected to play in a conference. This seems so obvious because of the whole UCF situation from a few years ago, but still, bettors are foolish enough to put money on other schools to win the National Championship at the begging of the season. You might as well take your money and light it on fire.
The year that UCF was considered a national champion they finished eighth in the College Football Playoff Ranking. The committee doesn’t respect these teams unless they beat three incredible teams in their non-conference matchups and that has yet to happen. Until the committee starts taking these programs seriously there is no way one is ever going to sneak into the playoff, no matter how good of a season they have. We won’t know when the committee feels is the right time to add a small conference team into the playoff until they do so, so your best option is to wait until the committee proves they are willing before spending any money on such a feat. You can root for a Cinderella … just don’t bet on them.
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Philip Wood is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Philip, check out his archive and follow him @Phil_Wood_Jr.