Online College Football Betting Platforms It is also vital that you choose real money NCAAF betting sites that provide multiple ways to play. In this day and age, players want to have access to their accounts from anywhere. You must be able to place bets on your PC but also your phone and tablet. We will prepare by starting with the basic college football betting types, including: spread bets, moneyline, totals, parlays/teasers and halftimes. Just like the NFL, college football’s most popular wager is the spread bet. The spread is a type of bet that equalizes the chance of winning a. The most fundamental aspect of college football moneyline betting is that it focuses on picking the outright winner of a game. This is the most pure form of betting. It simply asks you to answer the question “who will win?”. College Football Moneyline Betsby Predictem.com Staff. Another way to bet college football games is to do so using the moneyline. These bets are wagers in which your betting on one side or the other but with no point spread. In order to compensate for the spread, odds are applied to each side to make it fair. So, if your betting on the favored team, you do NOT need to cover any spread, you just need the team to.
How College Football Odds Work: Lines, Point Spreads and Over/Unders
If you’re going to bet on college football odds, it’s essential to understand each aspect of odds listing, including the rotation number, point spread, moneyline and over/under. You’ll often find different terms used to describe these with the rotation number called the number, point spread shortened to spread, moneyline to line and over/under simply called the total. These are all lumped together under the term odds.
Odds are basically a way of leveling the playing field and in college football due to the fact that there are hundreds of mismatches per year the field really does need to be leveled. By utilizing odds in various ways bookmakers are attempting to get an equal number of wagers on each team. In doing so, they are able to ensure that they make cash no matter who wins.
When reading college football odds, the first thing you will see on the left is the time and date of the game. Next, you’ll see two numbers and the team names. Each team is assigned a rotation number. These numbers are standard on all sportsbooks and do a few things. First, it creates a certain order for the games as each matchup is listed in numerical order. The other thing the number does is it allows bettors to refer to the game and team without having to mention the team name or anything else.
Date/Time | Rotation Number | Team | Point Spread | MoneyLine | Total |
Oct 2nd | 109 | Ohio State | -7.5 | -360 | 41 |
7:00 | 110 | Wisconsin | +7.5 | +280 | 41 |
Let’s say on a matchup between Ohio State and Wisconsin. If Wisconsin is the home team, the Buckeyes are listed first and given the number 109, then the Badgers would be listed second and would be 110. When placing a bet over the phone or at a land-based sportsbook you simply need to mention the team’s number.
After the teams, the various odds are listed. First will be the point spread. There may or may not be a moneyline, as sometimes a book will list these separately and finally the over/under is given.
The point spread will list one team in the negative and the other in the positive. (Unless neither team is favored, then they will be listed as EVEN or PICK). The club posted in the negative with a minus sign is favored and so the bookies take points away from them, which means that team must win by at least a certain number of points to cover the spread. The underdog will have a plus sign and will cover if they win outright or lose by less than the posted number.
This game may have Ohio State at -7.5 and Wisconsin at +7.5. If you bet on Ohio State at -7.5, which makes them the favorite, they must win by 8 or more for you to collect your winnings. On the other hand when wagering on Wisconsin, the dog in this point spread, the Badgers will pay off if they lose by less than 8 or win outright.
Sometimes you’ll find a spread listed as a whole number. Decimals or fractions are often used and do prevent ties but if in our example the spread was set at 7 with the Buckeyes being the favorite and they win by 7, then the game is a tie. That’s called a push. The result of a push is all bets are off and all money wagered is returned.
Although the odds on a spread bet are often listed as being even at 1:1, the fact is they are 0.90:1, which is a bit less than even. How does this work? Often in the point spread you’ll see next to each spread number -110. This tells you how much you have to wager to make $100. Thus, with the point spread -100 will always be listed, which means if someone wagers $110, they will make a $100 profit if they win. (If betting $11.00, the payout would be $10.00)
The moneyline works differently. With this type of wager whichever team wins outright pays off. There is no spread. How does the line work? The favorite is listed with a minus sign and a number. That number is the amount of cash that must be bet in order to win $100. The underdog is posted with a plus sign in front of a number. The number is how much a sports bettor wins on a $100 wager.
Taking the same matchup and odds, Ohio State would be listed at -360 and Wisconsin at +280. To take the Buckeyes, who are favored, a bettor would wager $360 to win $100. On the other hand when taking the dog, which in this case is Wisconsin, $100 is bet to win $280.
If Ohio State won and you bet to win $100 on the Buckeyes you would receive $100 plus your original stake of $360 returned back to you. Conversely if you laid $100 on Wisconsin and the Badgers pulled the upset you would receive $280 plus the $100 back that you used to place the bet.
There is a correlation between the point spread and the moneyline. You’ll find that these vary a bit from book to book and will move depending on the amount of action a book receives on the spread or moneyline, but they basically work like this:
Point Spread | Money Line |
-1 | -120/+100 |
-2 | -130/+110 |
-2.5 | -140/+120 |
-3 | -155/+135 |
-3.5 | -175/+155 |
-4 | -200/+170 |
-4.5 | -220/+180 |
-5/-5.5 | -240/+190 |
-6 | -270/+210 |
-6.5 | -300/+220 |
-7 | -330/+250 |
-7.5/-8/-8.5 | -360/+280 |
-9/-9.5 | -400/+300 |
-10 | -450/+325 |
The final type of bet you’ll find listed when looking at standard college football odds is the over/under. This is a projection of the total number of points that may be scored. It is usually listed as a fraction with the stake listed as it is in the spread (-110).
With the over/under or total, bets are being made on what the total score may be. In our example which features two solid defenses and good offenses, the total might be around 41. If OSU scores 24 and Wisconsin 20, the total would be 44 or over the 41. If the Buckeyes scored 21 and the Badgers 14, then the total would be 35 so the under would win. Once again sometimes, if the total is a whole number, the result may be a push. That results in all bets simply being returned.
Once you understand how odds in college football are expressed, you can use them to start to determine where your money should go. Be sure to see our college football odds page that connects you with the top sportsbooks on the Internet. The odds makers are trying to even out all bets. Your job is to determine on which side of the point spread, line or over/under it goes.
When most people think about betting sides in football their thought process starts and ends with the point spread. That’s unquestionably the most common and popular way to bet on the winner of a football team, but it’s not the only way. The moneyline is thought by many people to be just the way to bet on baseball, hockey, and tennis, but there is a moneyline set for every NFL game and most college games. I would never suggest that the moneyline should be bet instead of the point spread in football. The moneyline is definitely something that even casual football bettors understand, though, so that they can use it if it makes sense and gives them a better chance for profit. Simply, the moneyline is a very powerful tool to have in your football betting toolbox.
The biggest reason why people shy away from the moneyline is probably that they don’t understand them. They are really quite simple once you figure them out, though. The biggest thing to remember, and expert sports handicappers know this, is that unlike the point spread all you have to do is figure out which team is going to win. It doesn’t matter how much they win by – if you bet on a team on the moneyline and they win then so do you. In order to balance out the action – to get about as much money bet on the underdogs as the favorites – sports books charge different prices for the favorites and underdogs. The easiest was to understand this is with an example. If the Patriots were slight favorites over the Jets in a game then the moneyline odds might have the Patriots at -130 and the Jets at +120. That means that you would have to bet $130 to make a profit of $100 on the Patriots. You could obviously bet any amount you wanted on them, and the payoff would be calculated at the same proportion. Because the Jets are the underdog and therefore at least theoretically less likely to win you are rewarded more for betting on them – the +120 means that you would make a profit of $120 for every $100 bet. Because you have to bet considerably more to make a $100 profit at -350 than you do at -130 the team at -350 would be a significantly bigger favorite. On the other side, a team at +350 would be a much bigger underdog than a team at +120.
Here are five situations where smart sports bettors might consider using a moneyline bet instead of a point spread bet in football:
When betting on a slight underdog – Let’s say that you are betting on an underdog that is getting less than a field goal on the point spread. It’s certainly possible that the extra point or two you have in your favor are going to be relevant in the final score, but chances are good that you are betting on a slight underdog in a case like this not because you think that they are only going to lose by one point, but because you think that they have a good chance of winning the game outright. If you didn’t think that then your bet wouldn’t make much sense. In a case like that the moneyline make more sense than the point spread. You are going to lose on the moneyline if the team does win by one or two points (if the point spread is 2.5), so there is more risk involved. In exchange for taking on that slight extra risk, though, you have a chance at a nicer payoff. The point spread would generally be priced at -110, but the moneyline for the same team would be somewhere in the neighborhood of +120 (there is no direct relationship between point spreads and moneylines, so the best you can do is estimate). That’s a significant difference in potential payoff, and would certainly be attractive if you thought there was a good chance that the underdog was going to win outright.
When betting on a heavy underdog – If you have bet football for a while then you know that sometimes there are situations where you feel confident that a heavy underdog is not only going to cover a big spread, but has a very good chance of winning the game outright. Let’s say a NFL team is a 10.5 point underdog in a game, but you like their chances. If you bet them against the spread and they win outright then you get paid off at -110, so your $100 bet makes a profit of about $91. The moneyline on a 10.5 point underdog would be about +450, so that same $100 bet would generate a profit of about $450. You don’t have to be right very often to generate a better long term profit on the moneyline than against the spread. The trick, of course, is that the bet only makes sense if you think there is a good chance of an upset win. If not then you are just gambling, and smart bettors don’t gamble.
When you are parlaying – If you parlay three teams against the spread then you are paid off at fixed odds if you are right. Those odds are set by the sports books and are always significantly lower than the actual risk involved. For example, when you are betting a three team parlay there are eight possible outcomes – WWW, LLL, WLL, LWL, LLW, WWL, WLW, and LWW. Only one of those outcomes – WWW – would cause you to win your parlay bet. That means, then, that on the long term you would need odds of 7/1 to just break even, and better than that to make a profit. Most sports books pay off on three teams parlays at 6/1, or at best 6.5/1, though. That means that even if you can pick winners at the expected rate – harder than it seems – you are going to lose money over the long term. That’s called a negative expectation, and smart bettors hate negative expectations. Moneyline parlays don’t pay off at a fixed rate. Instead, the potential payout is essentially calculated by multiplying the odds of the games you are betting on together. If you were parlaying three games at +110 then the payoff would be exactly the same as if you bet on the first game, took all of your winnings and bet that on the second football game, and took all of the winnings from the that game and let it all ride on the third game. In other words, moneyline parlays payoff at true odds, and that’s always more attractive than negative expectations. That doesn’t necessarily mean that moneyline parlays are a good idea, but they aren’t as bad of an idea as point spread parlays usually are.