Most people in the United States already know how to bet on football games. People say that baseball is America’s pastime, but the truth is, I know more football fans than baseball fans. It’s been that way for years, too. But some people come to football fandom late in life. I probably never watched a professional football game until I was in my 30s. I know I didn’t bet any real money on a football game until then, either.
Football betting only seems intuitive to people who’ve been doing it for years because they’ve gotten used to all of it. If you’re new to the hobby of betting on football, don’t be discouraged. It’s easier to learn how to bet on football games than you think.
This post includes a 7-step process for not only learning how to bet on football games but also how to win at your betting activities on a consistent basis. It all starts with setting some simple goals, trying some tactics to see if you can achieve those goals, and then making some necessary adjustments based on your results.
I have friends who watch the NFL exclusively. I also have friends who watch college football exclusively. Most of my friends who love football watch both, though. Not all my friends bet on the sport, but those that do tend to prefer one over the other, although I also know some who bet on both.
If you’re interested in making money from your betting activities, you’ll find opportunities on both sides of this fence. If you’re new to betting on football, you might think that it’s important to specialize in one over the other, but that’s not the case. If you can handicap a college football game, you can handicap and NFL game, and vice versa. That’s not to say there aren’t differences. But there are few enough profitable betting opportunities each week without limiting yourself to one or the other.
You’ll find a lot more college football games to bet on each season than you will NFL games. That’s because there are just more college football teams playing than pro teams. College teams are much less consistent than pro teams, too. It’s a good idea to limit how many conferences you follow if you’re going to bet on college football.
Otherwise, you just won’t be able to make any meaningful decisions. You’ll drown in data. The biggest opportunity that betting on college football offers over NFL betting is that the lines are less likely to be accurate for the college games. The handicappers at the books focus more on the games which get the most action. When it comes to football, this means they focus on the NFL games.
The big trick to making money when betting on football is finding lines that don’t account for something. That’s how you find positive expectation bets. You’ll have more luck finding those situations when betting on college football games. But don’t forget that the unpredictability of college games can cause bigger bankroll swings.
The most common kind of bet you can place on a football game is a point spread bet. This is a bet that pays even money but takes into account which team is favored over the other. You’ll normally need to wager $110 to win $100 on a point spread bet, but you should have a roughly 50/50 probability of winning such a bet.
When you’re placing a point spread bet, one of the team s is the favorite. The other is the underdog. When determining the winner of the game for purposes of paying off the bet, you add the point spread to the underdog’s score. When those points are added, if the underdog would have been the winner, you win a bet on the underdog.
The underdog is the team with the negative number next to their name. The favorite is the team with the positive number next to their name. If the Dallas Cowboys are listed with a -7 next to their name, you would add 7 to their final score to determine whether a bet on them won.
The handicappers at the bookmakers try to set the point spread so that the teams each have a 50% chance of winning. More importantly, they’re hoping that the point spread encourages roughly equal action on either side of the game. Since you’re forced to risk $110 to win $100, a bookmaker with equal action on both sides of the games is guaranteed a profit. The 2nd most common type of wager when betting on football is the over/under. This is a bet on how high the total final score for the game will be. If it’s over the over/under, a bet on over wins. If not, the under bet wins.
For example, a game might have an over/under of 44. If the total score for both teams is 45 or more, the over bet wins. If the total score for both teams is 43 or less, the under bet wins. You’ll often see an over/under bet with a 0.5 at the end of it. This avoids situations where there’s a tie.
For example, the over/under might be listed as 33.5. A score of 33 would win for the under, while score of 34 would win for the over. Proposition bets are common in football, as they are in any kind of sport. These are bets on specific events besides who’s going to win the game. For example, a bet on which player will score 1st in a game is a proposition bet—aka a “prop bet.” These bets are also sometimes called “specials.”
Futures are another type of bet. These bets are also called “outrights.” These are bets early in the season on who’s going to win a division championship or on who’s going to win the Superbowl. These are long-term bets, but when they win, they usually pay off at great odds.
For example, Bovada is offering a futures bet right now on whether an AFL team or an NFC team will win the Superbowl. A parlay isn’t a specific kind of bet, really. It’s multiple bets made at once, and it only wins if all the picks that are part of the parlay win. Since it’s harder to guess multiple outcomes correctly, the payoffs for parlays can be terrific. They’re also correspondingly harder to win, though.
For example, you might take out a 2-game parlay. If you win, the book might pay you off at 2.5 times what you would have won if you placed individual bets on both games. For a 6-game parlay, your payoff might be 40 times what you would have won. Good luck winning a 6-game parlay, though. Those are the most common bets on American football, although other bets are available.
As I mentioned briefly in the last section, the book’s goal is to get roughly equal action on both sides of a football game. They set the point spreads (the “lines”) accordingly. When one side starts getting too much action, the books will adjust the point spreads accordingly, so that they can stimulate action on the other side of the game.
The trick to making money when betting on sports is finding situations where the line is off. Obviously, if you’re betting $110 to win $100, and you win 50% of the time, you’ll be a net loser over the course of your football betting career.
Let’s say you bet on 100 games. You win 50 of them, for winnings of $5000. You also lose 50 of them, for losses of $5500. Your net loss is $500. But let’s say you’re able to spot games where the point spread is off by enough that you’re able to win 55% of your bets. (That doesn’t sound so great unless you’re familiar with sports betting. In that case, you’ll realize that 55% is awesome.)
You win $100 on 55 of those games, for winnings of $5500. You lose $110 on 45 games, for losses of $4950. Your net win is $550. The trick is finding situations where the line is wrong. The handicappers who work at the sports books are good at their jobs. In fact, almost all of them are better at handicapping football games than you are. But they’re working with a restriction you don’t have. They want to stimulate equal amounts of action on either side of the game.
When they move a line that accurately represents a 50/50 probability of winning in response to the betting public, you have the opportunity to get some value. That’s because the general public is wrong more often than not. This is especially true when it comes to betting on favorites. Sports bettors love to bet on the favorite, so the book is often forced to give more points to the underdog to get some action on them.
You can find consistent value by betting against the public. Of course, you should also learn how to handicap games for yourself. Otherwise, you won’t know which line moves are big enough to make a bet profitable.
The 1st step to deciding on your overall approach to football betting is to decide how serious you are about the hobby. It’s okay to be a recreational gambler who accepts his losses. I have a friend who’s the biggest Dallas Cowboys fan in the world.
He bets on football, but he ONLY bets on the Cowboys. This is a losing strategy, by the way. But he doesn’t care. It adds to his enjoyment of the games. He doesn’t mind losing a little money every season by blindly betting on the Cowboys every week. For that matter, it’s okay to be willing to lose money just because you’re only interested in football betting for fun. Even then, I think it’s better to be an educated football bettor and place good bets, but I won’t judge you if you’re not.
On the other hand, some folks want to generate profits from their football betting activities. Their 1st step is to decide on how big their bankroll is. If you’re a good handicapper and an advantage gambler, you need a football betting bankroll that’s big enough to absorb the whims of fate and luck.
Every week, there’s at least one upset in the NFL. Usually there are a couple. If you have a huge amount of money riding on one of those games—as a percentage of your total bankroll—you’re in trouble. The goal anytime you have a long-term advantage in gambling is to avoid going broke until you reach the long run. In the short term, anything can happen when you’re wagering on something uncertain. But in the long run, your edge should begin to bear fruit.
If you go broke because of variance in the short term, though, you’re out of luck. Most experts agree that if you’re serious about betting on sports, you should put no more than 1% to 3% of your bankroll down on any single game. If you’re really aggressive and willing to accept a greater probability of going broke, you might go as high as 5%. This means that if you want to bet $100 per game, you need a bankroll of at least $2000. You’re a lot better off, though, if you have a bankroll of $10,000.
The next thing you want to decide is what strategy you’re going to take when deciding on who to bet on. You can find plenty of blog posts and articles about finding value when gambling on football. I can suggest that a good place to start is by looking carefully at underdogs and trying to bet against the public as much as possible.
Many football bettors just bet with their buddies. If you can find a buddy who’ll place wagers with you without requiring you to risk $110 to win $100, you’re ahead of the game already. If you can find someone naïve enough to ignore the point spread, you can make a fortune from him each week just by betting on the favorite without accounting for the point spread.
You’ll have limited success finding this much action with individuals, though. When that happens, it’s time to consider finding a professional. In most of the United States, this means finding a neighborhood bookie to bet with. It can also mean betting online with an offshore sportsbook. Some people just fly to Vegas to bet with the books there, but you must do so in person. They can’t take bets over the phone or the internet.
Recent legal changes mean that legal, regulated sports betting is coming to many states. Until that happens, those are your options. If you’re looking for a neighborhood bookie, just go to your local bar where people watch games. Get to know some of the other regulars there. Tip your bartender well.
When you’re comfortable enough with them, ask them if they know someone you can bet with. It won’t take long to find a neighborhood bookie if you know some folks at the bar. Offshore sportsbooks require a little more caution. I suggest looking for a referral here, too. If you have buddies who bet on football online, you can ask them who they bet with. You can also look at sites like this one, which feature reviews of sportsbooks.
The trick with online sportsbooks is to find one that pays your winnings in a timely manner. Some offshore books are slow to pay. Others just flat out don’t pay your withdrawals. You can avoid these kinds of operations by finding a recommendation for a trusted source. Don’t just go to Google or Bing and sign up at whatever random sportsbook shows up in the results. Find a website where the writers seem to know what they’re talking about, then consider their recommendations.
Keep in mind, too, that taking sports bets over the internet is borderline illegal. But the people who are really at risk in this situation are the ones running the books, not the customers at those books.
Even if you’re a strictly recreational gambler, you should write down your results week in and week out. You should record which bets you’ve placed, the amounts, and whether you won or lost. You should keep running totals and averages, too.
This is more important for someone who aspires to be an advantage gambler. But even if you’re just gambling for entertainment, it’s important to understand how much that entertainment costs you over the long run. You can use whatever tool you’re comfortable with for this purpose. You can use a spiral notebook and a pen or pencil. Or you can use an Excel spreadsheet or a Google document. Just keep records.
I’ve mentioned this in previous blog posts recently, but performance measured is performance improved. By just writing down your results as they come in, you’ll find yourself making better decisions. This might mean losing less money over the season, or it might mean winning more money over the season. Either way, you’ll have more fun by keeping a record of your results than you would if you didn’t.
Here’s the thing: When you start betting on football, you’re going to have ideas about what a profitable approach might be. You might think that betting on underdogs all season long is a profitable strategy.
You’ll soon find that the simpler your system is, the less likely it is to be accurate. That’s when you add other factors into your considerations. Maybe you realize after a few weeks that the only time your bets on underdogs win is when the underdogs are playing in home games.
You adjust your strategy accordingly, and your losses go down considerably, but you’re still losing money. If you’re paying attention, you’ll star to see other factors which affect your football betting results. Maybe home underdogs are a profitable bet, but only when the point spread is 7 or higher. Either way, you won’t know if you’re not recording your results, so go back to #6 and start paying attention.
Betting on football is a great hobby because it’s possible to win money on a consistent basis when you do so. The trick is to find an approach that works. Once you do, you’ll need to keep updating it to make sure it keeps working. Betting on football is fun and easier than you think. I think it’s a great hobby, especially if you’re just learning about the sport.
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