Everything You Need To Know About Betting This Season’s Bowl Games

Betting This Season's Bowl Games
Holiday Greetings, Degens.

It truly is the most wonderful time of the year where betting college football will soon be available to you morning, noon, and night-the likes we haven’t seen since the last World Cup. Starting Saturday December 15th at 1030 AM PST we are greeted by bowl season with The Tulane Green Wave against the Louisiana Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns. I mean, what else do you need?

Well, don’t transfer all that extra holiday cash from your relatives right into your bookies account, let’s take a look at some of the best trends available out there and actually apply them to this years slate of bowl games.

1. Rudder-less Ships Go Aground

I like boats, so if you didn’t get that analogy let me explain. If there’s no one to captain the ship it usually crashes into stuff, to be blunt.

Where does this apply to college football? coaches, of course. Bowls are one of the hardest things to handicap because there’s just so many unknown factors. Motivation, effort, injuries, the location, coaching changes, which players aren’t playing-you get the picture.

Coaches often times leave programs for brighter lights and the results in bowls show it’s quite detrimental to the schools success.

Last season, out of the six schools who had their head coach leave who were in pre-New Years Eve Bowls (Dec 31), went 1-5 straight up. Those schools were Texas A&M, Oregon, UCLA, Arizona State, FSU, and SMU.

This year: Utah State, Appalachian State, and Temple are all without their head coach in their bowl game prior to December 31st. This benchmark date is used due to less time for step-in coaches to prepare.

Utah State -7.5 Vs North Texas

Appalachian State -7 Vs. Middle Tennessee

Temple -3.5 Vs. Duke

2. The MAC May Be Fun, But That Doesn’t Mean They’re Profitable

Who doesn’t love some MACtion on a Tuesday night? Well, what makes the MAC on Tuesdays so great is that it’s MAC Vs. MAC. To put it nicely, the MAC isn’t exactly the greatest conference especially when they play out of their own conference.

In the last 11 bowls, MAC teams are 1-10 straight up.

In the last five years, the MAC is 6-22 straight up.

This Bowl Season (MAC teams on left)

Eastern Michigan +3 Vs. Georgia Southern

Northern Illinois +2.5 Vs. UAB

Ohio -3 Vs. San Diego State

Toledo -5.5 Vs. FIU

Western Michigan +12 Vs. BYU

Buffalo -2 Vs. Troy

3. Bowl Games Borrowing From The NFL-Spread Is Dying

In the last 10 years, Favorites are 175-186-5 against the spread. Out of the 186 underdogs who covered the spread, 136 won outright for a 73% win rate.

To borrow some literature from the What We Learned series in the NFL, money line it. Reduce your break even point and if you like an underdog with the points, sprinkle some on that money line.

4. “The Secret Total Chase”

Buckle up folks, I may just blow your mind on how to actually have a profitable bowl season, as far as totals are concerned.

Deep in the depths of Reddit’s basement, a few years ago a gambler sent out the following post:

Last season, the chase system went 29-9, although for the nine losses you have to factor in essentially a 3.3 unit loss each time.

The other way to do this chase system by limiting your exposure is by passing on a pre-game position on the 1H total. Watch it-like a hawk, and if the first half total goes over the number, play the second half under. Had you done this last season, you would have went 11-6.

*Special thank you to The Vegas Refund for bringing the betting under system to light.

5. Fade The Public

Keep it simple. Much like the trend I’m going to show you below, there is value in betting against the public for a variety of reasons in bowl season, the biggest is that most un-seasoned handicappers just look at who is the better team without factoring in any of the other factors that come along with bowl season, especially with underdogs.

Since 2005:

Underdogs receiving less than 50%: 187-160 (+17)

Underdogs receiving less than 40%: 123-88 (+28)

Underdogs receiving less than 30%: 35-19 (+14.4)

6. Fade That Little Number To The Left Of Teams

That’s the teams season ranking for the regular season, which truthfully we care nothing about when it comes to bowl season, especially if the other team doesn’t have one.

Since 2005, Betting against ranked teams was 165-155-3 ATS which isn’t going to yield much return.

The key is when an unranked team faces a ranked team: 49-39-1 (55.7%) ATS.

This Bowl season:

Iowa +6.5 vs. 18 Mississippi State

Northwestern +7 vs. 20 Utah

Boston College +2.5 vs. 23 Boise State

Arizona State +4 vs. 19 Fresno State

Oklahoma State +7.5 vs. 24 Missouri

Houston +3 vs. 22 Army

NC State +4.5 vs. 21 Texas A&M

Special thank you to all who post some of these great trends:

OddsShark

The Action Network

Chris Fallicia

Sports Insights

The Vegas Refund

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