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Strategies For Betting CFB Bowl Games
Strategies for betting CFB bowl games
Mark Gallant
ESPN INSDER
With more than three dozen bowl games on tap in the coming weeks, you probably want to nail down a betting strategy or two before the insanity begins. SportsInsights is here to help.
Going contrarian
You might have your eyes set on certain teams before even beginning to look at the game lines, but you might want to reconsider. If there's one time of year when betting against the public and going contrarian is the way to go in college football, it's definitely bowl season.
Why it works
In the regular season, betting against the public can get tricky in college sports. Because so many games feature small schools and non-televised games that aren't attractive to square bettors, betting against the public doesn't really exist for every game. If you bet against the percentages on a low-bet game, you'd likely be betting against sharp, professional bettors, which obviously is not a wise decision.
This is why paying attention to ticket counts is very important for college sports. The bigger bowl games will feature tens of thousands of tickets, while an unpopular game during the regular season might have fewer than a thousand bets.
However, betting against the public does work in heavily bet games. Because all of these games will be heavily bet, bowl season is an excellent time to go contrarian. I doubt many casual bettors would be betting on North Texas and Troy during the regular season, but they will during bowl season because the game is on television. Saturdays in December no longer have a giant slate of football games to choose from. Public bettors who are used to placing five to 10 wagers won't like it if they have just one or two pending wagers. They need that action!
This strategy has been surprisingly even more profitable when betting on the money line. If you bet on all of the same teams on the money line rather than the spread, you'd have won only 41.8 percent of the time -- but for a whopping 27.9 percent return on investment (ROI). Although betting football games on the money line might be taboo for some, it has been a rather lucrative strategy in this situation.
We still have a while to go before some of the games are played, so it's tough to predict which games will fit or not. Check the free odds page throughout the month to see the latest betting percentages.
Low cover rate
Another way to win during bowl season that doesn't require any monitoring or research regards a team's win percentage against the spread during the regular season. Teams that covered only one third of their games or fewer during the regular season have been a strong bet in bowl games.
Why it works
The college football season is very short -- probably a bit too short, if we're being honest. As a result, people might jump to conclusions about a team because of its overall record or ATS record. However, given the small number of games teams have played, these numbers might not be representative of their actual skill levels.
In the long run, a team's record against the spread tends to even out and regress toward the mean. Bettors will likely get caught up in the numbers and think teams that have done poorly against the spread will continue to do poorly against the spread.
Six teams fit the bill this season: Western Kentucky, Colorado State, UCLA, Florida State, USC and Kentucky.
At 22 percent, Florida State has the worst cover rate of the group. To my surprise, 52 percent of early spread bets have come in on the Seminoles, who can be had at -15.5 at the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook.
High cover rate
If taking teams with poor ATS records has been profitable, perhaps doing the opposite will yield similar results. My research shows that it has. If you fade teams that have covered at least two thirds of their games, you also gain an edge. Of course, for the principle to work, the team you bet on can't also have that high of a cover rate, so I've excluded games in which both teams have covered at least 66 percent of the time.
Why it works
This is not as strong as the previous system, but the sample is about three times larger. A return on investment of 8 percent with a more than 150-game sample is nothing to scoff at. The different sample sizes make plenty of sense, though, because teams that frequently fail to cover are far less likely to make bowl games than those that cover the majority of the time.
There are 12 matches this year, most notably the Clemson-Alabama game. Clemson has covered two thirds of its games, while Alabama has covered just 41 percent of the time. In the early going, 51 percent of bettors are taking Clemson, which has moved from +1.5 to +2.5 at the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook.
Note: Lines are always subject to change, so make sure to check in at ESPN Chalk's Live NCAAF Odds page throughout the week for updated lines and public betting percentage data. Odds info used in system matches reflect current odds at the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook.
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Originally Posted by funnyb25
