Bowl Game Breakdowns
This article will continue our pattern of looking at all games as a whole, this time concentrating on college football's second season, the bowl games. Due to the limited number of games each year, we'll look at 10 years' worth of results, as well as look at the past five years to see if the long-term trends are holding up.Due to the small sample size we have to work with, we'll also look at both sides and totals.
Bowl Games 2001 to 2010
The traditional thinking for bowl games has always been to take the underdog and the under, using the premise of the betting public's tendencies to take the favorite and the over. There is some support for that theory, as favorites are 131-159-7 against the spread over the past 10 years, while totals are 140-153-3, giving a slight edge to the under.Looking at different point spread ranges and teams' records:
Favorite of 2.5 points or less: 30-26-1
Favorites of 3 to 5.5 points: 58-47-4
Favorites of 6 to 9.5 points: 24-58-1
Favorites of 10 to 14.5 points: 17-26-1
Favorites of 15 to 19.5 points: 2-1
Favorites of 25 or more points: 0-1
Obviously, the record of favorites between 6 and 9.5 points leaps out at you, but unfortuntely, much of that came in the 2001 and 2002 seasons, when favorites in that range were just 2-13 ATS and in 2005 when they were just 1-7 against the spread. It is still a profitable situation, as we'll soon see, but nothing like it was between 2001 and 2005.
Bowl Totals 2001 to 2010
Now, we'll look at various over/under ranges and see if there are tendencies for games to go over the total or under the total:Total of 39.5 or less: 2-0
Total of 40 to 44.5: 15-23
Total of 45 to 49.5: 37-29
Total of 50 to 59.5: 55-69-3
Total of 60 or more: 35-34
Nothing really leaps out at you here, although there is a tendency for games with lower totals (44.5 or lower) to go under the total, as they were 17-23, or 42.5% over.
Bowl Games 2006 to 2010
Now we'll look at the same catagories over the past five years to see if there are any drastic changes:Favorite of 2.5 points or less: 19-18-1
Favorites of 3 to 5.5 points: 29-26-3
Favorites of 6 to 9.5 points: 19-28-1
Favorites of 10 to 14.5 points: 8-12
Favorites of 15 to 19.5 points: 2-0
We still see the smaller favorites covering the spread more often than not and the larger favorites not covering. If we were to look solely as favorites of six points or more, we'd see they have gone just 29-40-1 against the spread over the past five years, which is just 42%.
Bowl Totals 2006 to 2010
Looking at totals over the past five years:
Total of 39.5 or less: 1-0
Total of 40 to 44.5: 7-13
Total of 45 to 49.5: 19-13
Total of 50 to 59.5: 33-41-1
Total of 60 or more: 19-20
Here, we see more of the same as we did in the 10-year study, as totals of 44.5 or less have gone just 8-13 (38.1%) over the past five years, which is slightly worse than they performed over 10 years.
Based on history, there are two profitable situations to keep an eye on during the upcoming bowl season. We'll look hard at underdogs of six or more points and look to take the under in games with a posted total of 44.5 or less.
The results presented here were obtained from this year's Stat Attack For College Football 2011 program and gives you an idea of the type of research that you can do with the program.
