How to Bet on NCAA Football Games
Bet on NCAA Football Games
If you love college football, and how can you not love the bands, the traditions, and the tailgating, then you love betting on college football. Especially now, with the big slate of games on Saturday, but we also get games on Tuesday and Thursday too.
With more than 800 FBS games in a season, and another 760 or so games for FCS teams, there is no shortage of games to research, bet, and watch. And with sports betting legalization sweeping the nation, there is no shortage of online sportsbooks waiting to take those bets.
NCAA Football Season Structure
Like the NFL, with the majority of games falling on one day of the week, bookmakers, analysts, betting gurus, and you and your friends have a whole week to dissect each and every college football game. The growing anticipation and excitement that builds over the week spill out into one of Saturday’s best sports betting experiences.
But unlike the NFL, there is no meaningless preseason in college football. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. In the three or four games teams play before they begin conference play, quite often, we’ll see national powers face off. So, for example, the 2021 season has Georgia vs. Clemson, Alabama vs. Miami in the opening week, and Florida State vs. Notre Dame and Michigan vs. Washington in the first couple of weeks.
Then it’s on to conference play, where automatic bowl bids are at stake. And suppose teams do well enough in their conferences and in the overall national rankings. In that case, the College Football Selection Committee may decide to put them in the College Football Playoffs and give them a chance to win the National Championship.
The FBS puts four teams into the College Football Playoffs. The FCS plays a bracket tournament with 24 teams to determine its national champion.
Types of Single-Game College Football Bets
Betting the point spread is the most basic of all college football bets. But unlike the NFL, which sees primarily small spreads that remain stable over the week, college football has more volatility. As a result, the difference between the two teams can be significant, and the money being wagered is less. So just a few big bets can swing a spread several points in one direction.
One important thing to keep in mind about college football vs. NFL betting is that the huge college rosters and injuries that don’t involve star players have a much smaller effect on shifting spreads.
When betting on the over/under in college football games, there are a couple of things that all bettors should keep in mind. First, the style of play in each conference is different. So while it might make sense to take the under (45.5 points) in an SEC game, that same bet would be a loser by halftime in the Big 12.
So if you’ve decided to place a bet on the total points scored in a game, know how the conference plays. Also, fully research the tendencies of coaches when out to a big lead. If a coach decides to empty his bench because he has a 40-point lead, that guaranteed over may suddenly not be so guaranteed.
If you prefer to stay away from point spreads and totals and just bet on the outcome of the game, that’s where the moneyline comes in. And in the absence of a point spread that levels the playing field, odds are used for moneyline bets.
If you wagered on the Ohio State-Alabama national championship game following the 2020 season, you could have bet on a point spread of 8.5 or a moneyline that paid -310 on Alabama and +240 on Ohio State.
That means that in order to win $100, you would have had to bet $310 on Alabama. On the other hand, a bet of $100 on Ohio State would return profits of $240.
If you’ve never tried live betting, also called in-play or in-game betting, college football is a perfect sport in which to learn. The odds shift and point spreads move as the game progresses, and you can wager on any of it and at any time you want. You can also buy your way out of almost any bet at any time you want.
Because live betting odds and point spreads are determined by a computer that analyzes the progress of the game, there is no human bias involved. This means that often the fairest college football odds can be found in live betting.
Types of Multi-Game College Football Bets
As with other sports, you aren’t limited to betting on just a single game. If you have several games you like, and you like them a lot, why not package those bets into a parlay. If they all hit, you will win far more money than if you just bet them individually.
Some sportsbooks payout parlays on a slightly different scale, but usually, the payouts work like this:
- Two-team parlay: 2.6 to 1
- Three-team parlay: 6 to 1
- Four-team parlay: 11 to 1
- Five-team parlay: 22 to 1
- Six-team parlay: 45 to 1
If you put $100 down each on four games, and all four win, you get $400 in profit (minus the juice to the sportsbook). But if you take that $400, put it down on a four-team parlay, and all four games win, you get $4,400 in profit.
If you want to know why parlays are so popular with the betting public, look no further than that possibility. The potential for a big payday can be very enticing.
Of course, parlays are very popular with the sportsbooks too because those big paydays only come when all of your games win. So if even just one of the four loses, the entire parlay is lost.
Like a parlay, but you can accept a considerably smaller payout to move the point spreads in your favor. Teasers can move the spread by 6.0 points, 6.5 points, or 7.0 points, and the loss in payout is dependent on how many points you choose to tease the spread.
Once the new point spreads are in place after you have teased them in your favor, all rules of the parlay remain the same. Every game must be a winner in order for the overall bet to be a winner.
Prop bets in college football aren’t quite as big as they are in the NFL. But they are around, and they can be a great way to have some fun while also making a little money.
Because some states make it illegal to bet on individual player propositions for amateur athletes, most of the props you’ll come across are team and game props. For example, how many total rushing yards will be recorded, most pass attempts, penalties, which team scores first, type of first turnover, etc.
As with the NFL, the largest number of available proposition bets are during the College Football Playoffs.
If there is a team result to count, there is a team result on which to place a futures wager. For example, who will win the SEC? The over/under on wins by Notre Dame? Who will win the National Championship?
All of it can be wagered and at any time prior to the event taking place. So, for example, the day after Alabama beat Ohio State to win the 2021 National Championship, they were already the betting favorite to repeat in 2022.
College Football Betting Strategies
There is no magic formula to winning college football bets. Just do your research and try to have more information than the majority of your fellow bettors. Every edge you can gain is essential in tipping the scales to a winning Saturday of college football.
Understand homefield hype. Because of the reputations of some home fields like Clemson and Virginia Tech, bettors tend to go heavier for those teams. Bookmakers know this and answer that tendency by shading the point spread in that direction. Don’t be caught on the short end of a spread because the public bought the hype.
Byes are far less uniform in college football than in the pros, and that can be exploited in your favor. Teams coming off the bye are better prepared and more rested, and home favorites off the bye cover the spread more than any other week. Even more so if the home favorite coming off the bye is a ranked team.
Pick an area of expertise. There are simply too many conferences and teams for you to follow them all. So instead, dial-in on an area that you know the best, and then become an expert on that conference or group of teams.
This is especially effective if you’ve chosen a mid-major or small conference. Everyone knows what LSU and Auburn are doing each week. There is very little chance for you to gain an edge there. But if you know all, there is to know about Wyoming football and the rest of the Mountain West Conference, and advantages can be found.
There is less of a spotlight in fewer national conferences like the Mountain West, MAC, and Sun Belt. As a result, the experts spend less time on Central Michigan than they do Michigan or Michigan State, giving you, the bettor, an opportunity to find more favorable point spreads.
Where to Bet on College Football
All online sportsbooks will take your bets on college football, from the biggest and oldest names to the newest kids on the block. But not everyone has FCS games. So if you want to bet on every college football game played at the top two levels of the sport, look around. Not all sportsbooks will meet your needs, but many will.
When placing a bet on a game, you also want to look around for the best odds. The variation from book to book on the NFL is often non-existent. But for college football, you can find some disparities. If your searching can find you a difference in a point spread or moneyline, even a small one, it’s worth it.
And finally, find the free cash. Every sportsbook is fighting for your business, and they are willing to pay to have it. Look at the different offers for bonus bets, risk-free bets, deposit matching bonuses, and find the book that best fits your needs.
Sports Betting How To Guide
How Money Line Works?
Moneyline betting is by far the easiest way to place a sports wager. There are no point spreads to parse, no garbage-time free throws to ruin your betting day, and no last-minute meaningless touchdowns to take you from a winner to a loser.
How to Bet Odds
When we, as sports fans, learned our multiplication tables, we aced the number 7. Seven, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 were easy because we all watched football on the weekends. Multiplication by sevens, then add a three, a six after a missed PAT.
How to Bet on NFL Games
Baseball is America’s pastime, but football is America’s crazed passion, with its weekly schedule of games, millions of television viewers across the country and the world, and the billion-dollar stadiums that serve as Sunday cathedrals in 32 American cities.
What is the Spread?
If you are a golfer or have ever played on a bowling team, think of a point spread like a handicap. It is a way for two teams of differing abilities to play each other on equal footing. The better team, and the favorite in the game, gives a certain amount …
