College Football Betting Strategy: How To Make Winning NCAAF Picks
If you’re into football, but haven’t really dabbled too much on betting on college football, then this article is for you. On this page, we’ll review some of the more important college football betting tips, tricks, and strategies so that you, the bettor, can sharpen your skills.
College Football Is a Coaches’ League
If we take a look at which coaches have won the college football national title in recent years, we see most of the same names repeating. Nick Saban is always in the final small handful of teams with Alabama, and they’ve won the national title six times going back to 2003.
Dabo Swinney, of Clemson, is also up there every year these days, having won national championships in 2018 and 2016. Urban Meyer, Les Miles, and Pete Carroll are some of the other big name coaches that always seemed to get their teams into the title conversation.
It’s Key To Find Holes in College Football Spreads
When wagering on college football, it’s all about the edges you can find within the point spreads available at a sportsbook (such as FanDuel).
In most cases, college football betting lines for the upcoming weekend will be out in full by Tuesday for the games coming up that Saturday.
This is when you should start your process at looking over the betting lines, the points spreads, and seeing where the holes are. Those holes are where you will find your edges. From there, you can drill deeper into the games that stick out to you as you continue your process over the course of the week.
Limit Yourself Each Week To Stay in Control
With so many teams, and so many games, there is a ton of college football to bet on each and every week come football season. The more sports betting becomes legal and regulated across the United States, the more types of wagers you will find, too.
The days of a point spread, a money line, and an over.under point total are behind us, as it’s common to find a much wider variety of bets each week. That said, you might find yourself liking dozens of games and bets each week.
Limit yourself. This will help you stay in control and not overwhelm yourself. There’s only so much time people can dedicate to sports betting research each week, so use it wisely and don’t get bogged down by filling your plate with too much food.
Don’t Ever Consider Saturday Line Movement as Sharp
On Saturdays, the biggest day each week in college football when the majority of games are played, you’re going to see a lot of line movement. This is when most of the public gets its bets in.
The public didn’t have time to bet during the week because of work and squares often wait until Saturday morning to their minimal research before placing a few wagers. With such a high volume of college football bets coming in on Saturday, it’s the amount of money being bet that is likely the cause for the lines to move.
It’s ever so important to do everything you can to get yourself the best number possible when making a sports bet.
Find a Mid-Major Conference To Target
In college football, similar to other sports, the more popular teams tend to get the bulk of the action, whether that be bet volume, total money, or a combination of both. The biggest teams in college football come from the biggest conferences.
In college football, the biggest, most popular conferences belong to what is called the “Power Five” and it’s made up of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference, Pac-12 Conference, and Southeastern Conference (SEC). Because this is where the majority of bets and money will be flowing, Power Five conferences receive the most attention from sportsbooks and oddsmakers.
They’ll dedicate more time, effort, and resources to making sure their numbers are as dialed in as they can be when it comes to schools from Power Five conferences. There’s only so much time, effort, and resources to go around, though, which means you’re more likely to find market inefficiencies outside of the Power Five conferences. It will benefit you to focus on a mid-major conference that you’d like to target.
Once you establish yourself with a good foundation and comfortability between a Power Five conference and a mid-major conference, that’s when you can start expanding to include more conferences. Again, don’t bite off more than you can chew, especially too early. You don’t want to get buried and then find yourself chasing.
College Football Game Notes Are Very Important
College football news can be hard to come by, as teams are more regional than national as they are in the NFL. Finding the news and information you want can be a bit more difficult when it comes to college football. You’ll likely need to dig around through each team’s resources, such as beat writers, to find out what’s happening.
One great resource is college football game notes, which each team should make available for each game. You’ll likely find these on each team’s website. These notes are game-specific and allow you to look at depth charts. That’s where you can pin down news that likely isn’t made too widely available, which can be very important to your college football handicapping process. Use these game notes to your advantage the best that you can.