I’m inclined to think that the football endgame makes underdogs more likely to cover, while the basketball endgame makes favorites more likely to cover. Therefore I usually lean toward betting for dogs in football and favorites in basketball.
In football the leading team will often
try to run the clock down in the fourth quarter more than they’ll actually try to score and expand their lead. If the leading team can knee the game out, they’ll obviously do so, even if they’re inside the opponent’s red zone.
In addition, the prevent defense that is often used when the defensive team is up by 2 scores in the last few minutes actually increases the opponent’s odds of scoring. It basically is allowing an opponent a higher probability of one score, in exchange that there will be hardly any time for them to get a second score. Lastly, in college football games, coaches will often bring out the backups if their team is way ahead.
In basketball games, in contrast, the endgame makes the favorite more likely to cover. The endgame in basketball is endless fouls and endless free throws for the leading team. Oftentimes this artificially inflates the final score. A few days ago, I lost the Texas Tech-Duke game because Texas Tech fouled when they were down by 9 with under 30 seconds left. Frankly this doesn’t make a lot of sense at the NCAAB level, since the NCAA committee might be looking at their point differential in March. (And the foul probably made a less than 0.1% difference in TTech’s odds of winning.) But teams do this anyway.