Strategy & Theory: Teams Try to Win, Not Cover

Teams try to win, not cover.  It sounds like it should go without saying.  So why do we mention this?  Because we should keep this in mind when looking at lines for games, especially larger lines in football and basketball.  In the overwhelming majority of cases, teams don’t care about covering the number.  They only care about winning.  

Let’s take a look at a hypothetical game between Team A and Team B.  This football game line is Team A - 17 .  In the last couple of minutes of the game, Team A has the ball at Team B’s 20 yard line, and are up by 14.  If you laid the 17, you would be in trouble.  It’s not that Team A COULDN’T put up another touchdown, or even kick a field goal, to give you the win or at least a tie.  It’s that they WON’T.  Team A doesn’t care about covering the spread.  They want to run the clock out.  They might even run a 4th down running play, turning the ball over, instead of kicking that field goal.  Sometimes announcers even indirectly comment on these things at the end of games.  Brent Musberger famously said about a score at the end of a game that meant nothing to the outcome ... “That score means more to some than others”.  If you’ve been betting any amount of time, you’ve probably watched games that have been decided for who wins and who loses long before the final whistle to see how these types of scenarios play out.

So how do we know when to consider laying the spread, and how do we know when to lean more towards the moneyline?  Some things to consider are shown below:

Football and Basketball:  Generally speaking, the higher the spread, the more you should take the moneyline.  While the higher spread reduces the payout on a moneyline, the ROI is still very nice in general (as discussed in a previous article).  Teams want to win, not cover.  If the game is in hand, the team with a substantial lead generally tries to run the clock out, even at the expense of not scoring or even letting the other team score.

Baseball and Hockey:  these games are both usually + or - 1.5.  In baseball, it is called the run line.  In hockey, it is called the puck line.  In baseball, one phenomenon to consider is that typically late in games, the team with a lead will often gladly give up a run to get an out.  In hockey, a phenomenon to consider is that the team that is losing typically pulls their goalie at the end of the game, sometimes giving up another goal in the process. These two trends can wreck your tickets at the end of games. 

The point of this is to keep in mind that teams try to win, not cover.  Keep that in mind the next time you like a football team to cover 17 or a hockey team laying 1.5 goals at -185.  Taking the moneyline might be the safe play.  And it might also be the only profitable play for the team you want action on.

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