Football Betting Tips and Strategies

Sportsbook customers venturing into college football betting for the first time could easily be intimidated. The sport involves a large number of teams, divisions, conferences, and other sub-categories, which means there is a large pool of bets available on any given weekend. The sport also involves a vast number of teams competing on a weekly basis. Toss in a brand-new wrinkle in the form of an end-of-the-year college football playoff and it is easy to imagine frustration on the part of the first-time college football bettor.

Tips and strategies to assist the most amateur NCAA sports gambler are based on two factors - common sense betting strategy and a bettor's engagement with the sport. As is the case for wagers placed on any sporting event, research and an understanding of the little variables that affect outcomes is the difference between a win and a loss. Most college sports wagering mistakes are avoidable and newcomers to the hobby can get ahead of the competition with just a few basic strategy tips. For suggestions on where to bet on football, you can visit our page dedicated to sportsbook reviews for some insight into what you can expect at the leading USA college football betting sites.

Bankroll management makes up a significant piece of any successful betting tactic, whether the game in question is poker, slot machines, or the outcome of NCAA football games. Wagers on college games take place across a span of about 20 weeks, including the new playoff series. The best way to increase the entertainment value of your gambling budget – also known as your "bankroll" – is to establish what's called a unit bet size and stick to wagers of that size only. It is also important that you do not 'chase' bad bets with good money trying to make up for previous losses and that you establish spending limits that you are committed to. This will keep your budget in tact and help you to avoid getting into a situation in which you are spending money designated for other areas of your life, which is how gamblers get into serious financial troubles.

Professionals keep their unit bet size to five percent – some more, some less. Amateurs should risk less of their total budget per wager than that. A punter with $1,000 to spend on all of his 2014 NCAA football wagers should stick to units between $10 and $30 apiece. This minimizes the impact of losing streaks, protects your ability to wager in the future, and helps prevent emotion-based betting, which can drain your budget quickly. For beginners, placing unit wagers of two percent is both aggressive enough to turn a profit and conservative enough to protect a bankroll.

Different sportsbooks offer different college football odds, and during a given week, point spreads and other odds numbers move based on a variety of factors like injuries, action in the worldwide betting market, or changes to front-office staff. Even a silly rumor can affect the line and move it either in or out of a bettor's favor. Use the movement of the line as a piece of data, not as a call to action. All line movements are not reasons to place extra wagers.

Because NCAA football games take place a week apart, sportsbook customers laying NCAA football wagers have extra time to research, but also more time to maintain their basic wagering information. This means keeping track of bets placed, teams wagered on, amounts won and lost, and success rate versus established season minimums and maximums.

With games spanning from August of 2016 to January of 2017, there is plenty of action in a college football season. The cliché "Sports betting is a marathon, not a sprint" is a cliché for a reason – it makes good sense. The best bettors in the world barely break the 50% success rate, and these handicappers do research and hunt for good lines for a living. Remember that streaks are mathematically-common; gamblers who use proper bankroll management won't be too heavily-impacted by the eventual losing streaks they'll undergo. It's a long season.

It is easy to get caught up in rivalry games and contests with the most action. Yes, tons of money exchanges hands during Alabama vs. Auburn or Michigan vs. Ohio State. But the smaller pool of bettors researching less-popular games plus the fact that books spend less time evaluating the down-ticket contests means better odds opportunities for gamblers that bet more esoteric games. A bettor who can handicap a team like Wichita State or Florida A&M with consistency will have a nice niche carved out for himself.

A final tip to the brand-new college sports or football bettor – watch for big point spreads (30 or more in particular) or large over/under totals relative to a team's seasonal performance. A big blowout game means the contest favorite plays down to their competition while the underdog pushes hard to prove themselves to critics. Wagering against 30+ point favorites is a good example of a beginner's strategy that can be tracked with proper research and homework, controlled by unit bet sizing, and implemented to make NCAA football gambling more entertaining.