College Football Betting: Preseason Signs That a Team Will Cover Spreads
By Loot, NCAA Football Handicapper, Lootmeister.com
In preseason, there are many different items of consideration that contribute to how a team is perceived as it enters the new season. A lot of it is wrapped up in hype, name-power of athletes and institutions, and other things that don’t necessarily contribute to good value. There are other signs that, while troubling to fans of that team, are actually good for us bettors in an against-the-spread sense.
In college football, there is a ranking system, unlike in the NFL. A team’s high-ranking has an almost-hypnotic affect on some bettors. They think if the real experts believe a team is good, that must be the case. Just remember that ranking you see is not the top 25 of teams that are going to earn us money. It’s the best teams. When everyone thinks a team is good, that might not resonate well in their betting value.
Look for teams that are flying under-the-radar. For a variety of different possible reasons, no one is really giving them much attention. But at the same time, you see something there. Not to mention the simple dynamic that a lot of times, teams tend to perform better when the spotlight is not shining.
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Look for teams from stacked conferences. Or at least keep an eye out for sleeper teams that lie in conferences that are typically dominated by a certain team. It’s easy for a team’s true upside to be drowned out when a conference boasts of several powers. And when people expect a certain team to always dominate a conference, you can find good value on a team that is subtly gaining ground on them.
Look for teams with deceivingly-bad records from the year before. How bad depends on the team. For a team like Texas, a 7-6 record would be considered bad. For another team, it might be a 2-10 record. Whatever the case, not all teams with bad records are cut from the same cloth. A team may be 4-7, but 4 of those losses were by a field goal or less. Or maybe they just had a brutal schedule and are now looking at an easier one. Or a bunch of key starters are returning with the iffy ones departing. It can really be anything.
While high-profile player and coach departures are not positive signs for a team in an overall sense, they might reduce public confidence inordinately enough for us to squeeze some good value out of it. A good team usually has a few very identifiable stars. When those guys leave, that team is sometimes expected to go through a rebuilding mode. A lot of times, the drop-off in effectiveness is not as steep as some anticipated.
College football has become a veritable rotisserie of coaching changes year after year. Sometimes, a team cannot keep pace when a highly-successful coach takes a new gig. Other times, a team stays surprisingly on-point even after the coach is gone. Maybe that coach left some residual pixie dust floating around in the locker-room, or it could just be that the new coach simply has what it takes. Look for teams where people are expecting them to suffer markedly on the basis of a coaching change. That element tends to be overstated by the general betting public.
In today’s Internet age, we have access to mass information. This especially applies to bad news. Bad news sells. There used to be a respectful distance the press would maintain dealing with these amateur athletes, but big-time college football has become a free-for-all media deluge. There can be teams where all you hear is bad stuff all spring and summer long. A guy is injured. Another guy is suspended after a bar-fight. A kid is not gelling with the coach. Almost every sports fan now hears about things that only the hardcore set would know about in the past. When all news about a team is negative, the chance is there that the backlash will be out-of-whack and that team might actually represent good value for the upcoming season.
It’s important to make the distinction between information that is troubling for a team and its fans and information that helps us cover spreads. Sometimes, those things go hand-in-hand. Not all that looks bad is bad for betting purposes. In fact, when the public is lapping up negative info about a team, that team might just become increasingly worthy of betting.
