The Myth of Home Field Advantage in College Football

Home-field advantage is overrated, especially in college football.
There is no denying that many teams perform better at home. The issue is that the lines makers know that bettors will lean towards the home team if they can't quite decide which team to bet. Consequently, they tend to inflate the line in college football by an average of 3 points to the home team.

Fortunately for us first half money line bettors, one size does not fit all. Sure when you have a packed stadium week in and week out like Michigan or Florida, the home team probably warrants an advantage.

Well how about those teams that do not fill their home stands every week. The lines makers are giving them the same average home advantage as the full house teams when they really do not deserve it.

This is where we can capitalize on first half money line plays. Even when betting on a road dog in a capacity filled stadium, it has been proven that the crowd does not normally have a major influence until the 4th quarter.


One of several things I look at when playing college football, is the average attendance vs the stadium capacity. This will tell me a lot about fan support.
When you start getting my college football plays you will normally see an number of obscure underdogs playing on the road for the reasons I mentioned above. All I want to do, is to be leading a game at halftime.

If you want to pick a winner for a high profile televised game I can help you with that. On the other hand if your main motivation is making money then follow my plays on the Appalacian States and Towson Universities of the world.

Here is why you will make money playing 1st half money line football plays

First of all, I want to give credit to David Payne who wrote the following article. I thought is was very timely to explain why betting the first half of football games on the moneyline will make you money. Despite all of the
in-depth pre game analyses that go into football games on TV and the radio, the reality is that anything can happen. This is an example of what can happen in a football game that can make you a winner or a loser. If you bet underdogs on the money line you will make money! The following example is a point spread loss. We only play money line underdogs in football for the first half.

__________________________________________________

David Payne writes:

It’s good to see football giving bettors an early kick in the gonads. It wakes us up and prepares for what promises to be a season full of bad beats. Be mindful of your composure this season. Don’t waste time beating yourself up over a bad pick; instead, use that time to focus on your next play. Keep your cool.

San Francisco, a 3.5-point favorite, led 13-3 late in the fourth quarter. If you were invested in the Vikings, you were miserable. Brett Favre ran just four plays, and the offense had done absolutely nothing.

Webb, the rookie quarterback for Minnesota , started the fourth quarter. But Minnesota fans weren’t exactly oozing confidence about a spread-covering drive.Then, like a surprise Jagerbomb, Webb changed everything. Out of the shotgun, he took off up the middle and scored on a stunning 48-yard scramble. The extra point made it 13-10 and simultaneously pissed off every San Francisco bettor that had San Francisco -3.5 points. Minnesota bettors suddenly had a winner with nine seconds to play.


But, wait, Mr. Webb was not through.

After recovering an onside kick, the 49ers unsuccessfully tried to run out the clock. They ended up punting with nine seconds to play.

The Vikings took over at their own eight. Instead of just running out the clock and not risking a silly injury on the last play of a meaningless preseason game, Webb took the snap out of the shotgun. He scrambled around, all the way back into his own end zone and was sacked for a safety. Nothing hurts more than the old dagger safety.

Final score: 49ers 15, Vikings 10. Ouch. In essence, Viking bettors that had +3.5 were celebrating victory until it was taken out of their hands in the last few seconds.

________________________________________________________________________

Moral of the story....play 1st half money line underdogs because you never know what can happen. If you win only 50% of your bets you will be profitable.

The Beauty of 1st Half Football Money Line Betting

The vast majority of football bettors, whether they bet the NFL or NCAA, use the point spread for their bets. A typical example might be a bet on the Dallas Cowboys at home against the Green Bay Packers. If the line is Dallas -6 (-110) they can take either Dallas -6 points or Green Bay +6 points. Regardless of which team they take they immediately put themselves in the hole. The reason is the 10% vigorish (-110) or commission that bettors have to pay. They have to win almost 53% (actually 52.38%) of their bets just to break even. That may sound easy, but it's not.

My interest in betting on sports is strickly to make money. I don't want the book makers to have an advantage. The solution is to bet on money line underdogs and forget about point spread betting altogether.

Taking it one step further, there is an incredible amount of value in betting the underdog for the first half of a football game on the moneyline. This is what I specialize in when I make my plays.

The handicapping criteria I use is different because all I am looking to do is to have my team ahead at the half. I'm not worried about smaller offensive lines or running backs getting tired in the second half or a myriad of other things that happen late in a game.

I'm just trying to sneak in a first half lead. It is statistically significant that underdogs tend to lose games towards the last part of a game. My goal is to take advantage and try to bet on underdog teams that have at least a 50% chance of being ahead at the half.

If we use the Dallas - Green Bay example, the first half point spread line might be Dallas -3 (-110) or Green Bay +3 (-110). However, on the money line, Green Bay might be +150. That simply means that if Green Bay is leading the game at the half $100 bettors will have won $150. If they lose they will only lose $100. Points are taken out of the equation. Green Bay just has to be leading.

Now, think about this. One field goal can make the difference between losing $100 on this bet or winning $150.

All of the sudden, you only need to win 40% of your bets to break even. A winning percentage above that is profitable. As a matter of fact, if you are getting +150 on your first half bets, and are leading 50% of your games at half time, a $100 bettor would be ahead $2,500 over a span of just 100 games.

Should You Bet On Preseason Football ?

As most of you know, I focus on money line underdogs for the first five innings of a baseball game, or the first half of a basketball or football game.

Since football is the most popular sport to bet on, I am getting a lot of questions about preseason NFL football betting. As a rule, I do not bet on preseason football because the sports books do not typically offer money lines for these games. They usually just put up point spreads. The point spreads are usually very tight with most of them falling between -1 and -3 points regardless of who is playing. Unfortunately there is very little correlation between preseason and the regular season.

If I do bet on preseason, I do it as a small part of my bankroll mainly for fun, and never put out official plays until the regular season starts.

One thing you might want to look at if you want action is betting on the new coaches. Often they want to get off to a good start right away to set a fresh new environment of winning.


This year there are only three new coaches. Mike Shanahan - Redskins, Pete Carroll -Seahawks and Chan Gailey - Bills.

Another thing is to look at is the idea of going against teams that had a great season last year and have a carryover of stability. These teams are usually not concerned about winning until the regular season.

Have fun if you bet the preseason, but wait until the regular season to make serious money.

Speaking of making money, we are off to a 6W-5L start on our baseball underdogs. $100 bettors are up $370 through today as we cashed our one early bet on the Twins (first five innings +$140). August is a great month to bet on baseball

Regards,

George
703-217-0805
gak555@yahoo.com

Winning Percentage vs Units Won

I want to give credit to Allen Moody for some of the content in this post.


If somebody were to ask you if you would rather be a 60-percent handicapper or a
55-percent handicapper, which would you choose? The obvious answer is that it's better to be a 60-percent handicapper, but that isn't necessarily true.

Since we only bet on money line underdogs, the only statistic that sports bettors should be concerned with is units won.

Units won is the amount of profit, or loss, that a sports investor has over time. We do not worry nearly as much about winning percentage.

With baseball season in full force, many sports bettors are seeing ads from different sports services claiming winning percentages of 65-percent for baseball, and that's entirely possibly, but what the services aren't saying is that the majority of their selections were favorites of -200 or more, turning that 65-percent handicapping into a losing proposition.

Making it more difficult for sports bettors is that some sports services will claim to have won 200 units in a particular sport, but don't mention that they release 10- or 20-unit plays, along with several 100-unit "locks" at the end of the year if things aren't going so well and they need something to base next year's advertising on.

Units won is really the only thing you should be concerned with, as that ultimately is going to translate into the bottom line. When you only bet money line underdogs, you can win only 50% of the time and make a lot of money.