College Football Win Totals

One of the most exciting times of the sports betting year is the day that college football win totals are released.  It signifies getting serious about power rankings, and provides are renewed interest from professionals and recreational bettors alike.  

Some books release the most popular/biggest programs first, with the smaller schools weeks later.  Other books will release over 100+ teams at the same time.  It can be easy to be overwhelmed by all the opportunity.  Keep in mind with numbers for regular season wins usually ranging from 3-11, there can often be substantial juice (ie -140+) or substantial plus money (+160+) on these bets.

So how do we get started identifying tickets we like? After years of reviewing, and trial and error, we have identified some criteria that has proven very useful when identifying if the books may be overvaluing or undervaluing a particular team.  Those criteria are below:

1. Head Coach: a good head coach knows how to maximize talent and mask deficiencies in his team.
2. Previous year turnover margin: if the team had excessive turnovers, it likely led to losses that could have been wins and may not be accurately depicted in a new win total.  Likewise, if a team had excessive takeaways, that may have helped them win a couple more games they might not have.  In a single season this can have an enormous impact if skewed one direction or the other.
3. How did the team finish the last 4-6 games in the previous year? Sometimes it takes a team time to gel.  Especially when new coaches and schemes come into play.  The last 6 games are more important to look at than the first 6 games of a previous year when thinking about a new season win total.

The first thing to do is to look at the schedule.  There should be some easy wins and easy losses to identify.  Second, for the games that could go either way, look at the three criteria above to see if any of those factors stand out to help make a decision.  Third, for those hard-to-call games, is the team you are looking at on the road, or at home?  Finally, some games are too close to call for these purposes. We have found that assigning 1/2 credit is helpful.  If you give the team you are looking at two 1/2 credits, that counts as one win and one loss.  Keep in mind, the books immediately start hedging based upon how they feel sports bettors will react at certain numbers.  That doesn’t mean -185 or +210 is good or bad, just the book’s interpretation of how they think bettors will respond to the lines.  One more note, these win totals, and the juice, adjust leading up to week one.  You may pay more on your win or get more on your win by waiting.

In other articles on this blog, we will be posting about the impact and statistical playable options for both previous year turnovers and returning lettermen/starters.  Both of these variables can be very telling, statistically and historically, as to how a team will perform the next year.

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