College Football Betting Strategy – The Ultimate Guide [2024]

Are you a seasoned NFL bettor trying to forge your way into the college market applying the best betting strategy for college football?

You may as well be interested in knowing how the two markets compares.

Let’s make it clear right away that NFL and NCAA football aren’t the same. Yes, they’re centered on the same sport, and the points accrue in a similar way, but the betting considerations are vastly different.

This also means NCAA football betting tips are significantly different from those used in NFL betting. We get this out of the way by looking at a few differences between NFL and NCAAF (college football):

Number of Teams
It’s pretty easy to tell how many teams constitute the NFL. But numbers escalate when we come to college football. Numbers become significantly important when it comes to analysis. While it’s easy to study 32 NFL teams, it becomes a major task is you have to assess 128 college football teams.

Also, theoretically more college teams means you have many games to bet on and better chances to find value spots.

 Range of Quality
Quality gap among NFL teams might be significant, but there is always a chance for each team to triumph against its opponent. College football, on the other hand, comes with a much bigger talent gap to the extent of a guaranteed blowout.

Frequency of Mistakes
The frequency of the unexpected makes football unpredictable, whether CFB or NFL. Conspiracies that the NFL is rigged will always exist. However, more often college teams fall victims of the unexpected than the professional NFL teams. These mistakes are as costly to you as a bettor as they are to the teams.

Media Coverage
Both NFL and college football are heavily covered, but NFL coverage is by far more extensive. Thus, it’s generally easier to gather relevant betting info about NFL than college football.

Volume of Betting Activity
Generally, NFL attracts more betting interests than college football. This also means bookmakers and mobile betting sites will focus more on NFL. With smart people setting odds and lines, it becomes a little more tasking to beat them. CFB lines receive less attention making them a little easier to beat.

NCAA Football Bet Types
Just like the NFL, college football gives you a variety of bet options. Standard bet types include spread, totals money lines, parlays and teasers. You could also try some exotic bet types like the if bet and win reverse bet.

Spread bet is as popular in college football as it is in the NFL. Here a spread is set with a favorite and an underdog. This form of betting comes with equal chances of winning.

To win in such a bet one team has to cover the spread. A “+” for any spread indicates the underdog while A “–” indicates a favorite.

Next to the spread appears a large number called the ‘juice.’ This is basically the fee that bookmakers will charge you on a bet.

Sometimes, although not very often you may see the spread expressed as “PK”, which comes from pick or pick’em. So to answer the question what does PK mean in betting, it means that there is no clear favourite in a match and both teams have equal chances of winning. The spread will be 0 and displayed as pk.

The money line form of betting is equally common when it comes to college football. In this type of bet the bookmaker sets lines which represent the favorite and the underdog.

As the name suggests, this form of sports betting allows you to bet on the total number of points that both teams will score. If bookmakers set an over of 38 points in a Sentinels – Ducks match, your betting task is to decide whether the total scores will be under or over 38 points.

A prop bet departs from the regular match outcomes and final scores to take different special forms. Player-based forms include how many touchdowns or yards a specific player will score. Others are centered around live betting i.e. if a team will score on a specific drive.

In a parlay bet, various games and outcomes are linked to one another making a single bet. To win in such a bet all outcomes must unfold as predicted.

This college football betting model goes further to involve other bet options like moneyline betting and totals betting. Parlay bets are commonly known to increase risk and reward in college football, regardless of the currency you choose to bet on.

A teaser bet is a parlay in a for that features 2 to 10 wagers combined, and allows you to adjust point spreads or totals to your advantage in exchange for a reduced payout.

When you’re teasing a point spread you can choose to decrease or increase the spread for the favorite of the underdog respectively.

Teasing a total, on the other hand, involves increasing the under or decreasing the over.

It is very important that you learn the main key numbers in sports betting before teasing point spreads or totals.

Further into the college betting is the need to grasp some key concepts in college football. These concepts also shade a considerable amount of light on how to bet on college football games.

Value is what separates casual college sports betting from real sports handicapping and it can also be applied for e-sports betting. A winning college football sports betting strategy requires you to find positive value, but for more read sports betting benefits.

It takes a bit of work to start taking action only on those bets with value but the payoff is significant once you have a football betting system that works and you understand what you’re doing.

Here we look at college betting odds in terms of college football betting percentages. Take –175 betting odds, for instance.

The favorite is tail in this situation and this converts to 63.6% as illustrated below:

175/ (175 + 100)*100 = 63.6%

This represents the likelihood of tails landing, like the odds imply. A bet is of positive value if the actual likelihood of an outcome in question is higher than what the implied probability has suggested.

We’re done showing you value when you try to bet on sports betting exchanges. Now we introduce you to the concept of real odds, which we compare against the implied probability.

Handicapping football is basically the process of collecting data, stats and other vital info and using it to make informed predictions.

All college football betting strategies in college football betting begin with data collection. The process further includes compiling, weighing variables and tweaking various metrics’ weight to achieve more accurate predictions.

This is a betting strategy for college football that was first introduced by Mike Wohl, an MIT graduate during one of the Sloan Sports Analytics Conferences a few years back. Wohl found out that betting on heavy favorites with points spreads from 20 to 25 points on the moneyline translates into significant profits over the year.

This strategy involves finding home teams which are favored by 14 points or more. Bet these four – 14 squads on the moneyline instead, and return nearly even-odds.

This is another high probability strategy that doesn’t bring huge returns instantly, but worth something in the long run.

Home field advantage is all real but the fact that it’s often overvalued by oddmakers is also undeniable. Knowing how recreational bettors are obsessed with home teams, oddmakers shade lines towards them which cause these bettors to take bad overpriced numbers.

Adding to home teams for public sports bettors is their love for favorites. After all, any average bettor will want to bet on nothing but a better team. This translates to increased value on underdogs. It’s harder for favorites to cover spreads due to fewer betting points, and that’s how low totals benefit dogs.

Also, conference dogs play other conference teams once a year. The knowledge of each other’s tendencies levels the playing field and the resulting familiarity enables conference to perform a lot better than non-conference dogs.

No spot is as profitable as a short spread for road dogs. This is when the dog is getting four or lesser points. Public bettors will always go for home favorites and even more when winning is by a simple touchdown.

Another public bias you can capitalize on.

The public has it wrong more often than not. This makes betting against the public another excellent option. However, it’s not always about taking any team that gets less than 50% of the bets.

Your focus should be mostly on the lopsided games of the day which attract the heaviest amount of public action.

The betting line moving in the opposite direction of the betting percentages is one way you can locate sharp action.

After a ‘bye’ is the time when a team gets a much-needed rest and plenty of time to rehab players with injuries. Coaches also get their players ready for the next opponent.

This in unleveled proportions benefits home teams (who don’t have to travel) and favorites (who have better players and receive better coaching).

An average Joe also loves taking overs. Exciting and high scoring games is such a thing among public bettors. Sportsbooks, bearing this in mind, will shade the totals accordingly.

However, temperature throws in massive discrepancy. The defense will get gassed easily when it’s hot. This benefits the offense leading to more points.

Do college unders benefit from the wind? Certainly. Unlike professional quarterbacks, college quarterbacks have weaker arms.

This means it’s extremely tasking when to throw in the wind. Teams will often spend much of the time running the ball. Also the already unreliable performance of college kickers will significantly drop when they play in swirling winds.

Using online betting sites though not significantly important has some advantages. First it guarantees safety and convenience. It’s also fast and you typically land better odds and lines plus some bonuses and rewards.

There are some essential stats that you can keep your eye on and great value. We’ve illustrated the most common stats here.

A team making more big plays is likely to win against the opponent. Statistics indicate that a team leading in PPP will win 86% of their matchups.

The betting strategy here is to look for a team that tends to play big, and keep a close eye on the defensive stats. They’re likely to lose if they’re continually giving up high PPP numbers.

Success rate is measured in terms of the number of baselines. A team with high efficiency rating is likely to avoid drive-crippling passing downs. It also stays on schedule, controls the clock and keeps on the field thus wearing the opponent’s defenses.
A team ahead of its opponent in efficiency is also likely to win the game 86 percent of the time.

Special teams win games, right? As such, a team that wins the field position is likely to win the game 72% of the time.

This is pretty simple. A team must score touchdowns on majority of its drives that reach beyond its opponent’s 40. Even with fewer scoring opportunities, a team that can still put points on the board wins the game 725 of the time.

These aren’t big contributors in handicapping games but they still count. Minimize on your tendency to give up the ball and you have a better chance to capitalize on offense. A team on the leading end of the turnover wins the game 73% of the time.

We didn’t promise you any instant success in college football betting at the beginning of our college football betting guide however, at this point we’ve given you everything you need to one part of the equation right, and it’s by far the most important.

What’s left is a bit of effort from your end: carry out the research and find winners. Come up with a plan, follow our NCAA football betting strategy to determine who to bet on college football and crush the books placing college bets. Next you’ll be figuring out how to spend the fortune that comes with the most informed betting.

Well, here is what we guarantee; a clear direction towards vital research and ultimate value in college football betting games. We hand you the right tools to stand yourself from the general betting public and set yourself to win big on a college football bet.