Handicapping College Football
One mistake that a number of sports bettors make is in trying to handicap all sports the same. Each sport has its own distinct tendencies, including professional and college versions of the same sport, such as basketball and football. Handicapping college football the same way as one does the NFL typically doesn't work for several reasons, while we'll try to outline here.
As Phil Steele notes each week in his excellent Power Sweep football newsletter, there are three basic types of football handicapping; Fundamental, Situational, and Technical. We'll look at each of the three and how they apply to the college game, as well as give a few instances where they differ from the professional game.
Fundamental Handicapping is what I refer to as Statistical Handicapping, which is the use of statistics, power ratings, and personnel match-ups to determine a selection. This type of handicapping is crucial for the NFL, but carries a little less weight in college football.
One reason is that a bettor has fewer games to fine-tune their power ratings, as teams typically play 11 games instead of the 16 games that make up the NFL season. Another factor to consider is that a number of colleges play one or two games against significantly weaker or stronger teams, which further clouds the statistics, as well as makes power ratings a bit more unpredictable.
In the NFL, the biggest difference between the very worst team and the very best is generally around 17 points, while a major college football power playing a Division 1-AA team can be expected to win by 60 points.
Situational Handicapping This type of handicapping is much more significant in college football than the professional game. Situational Handicapping includes letdowns, look-aheads, revenge games and systems.
Because we're dealing with young men, 18 to 23 years old, who tend to be much more emotional than professional players, who in theory, should be ready to play every game. While it's true there are spots you can predict a letdown by an NFL team, the cases are much less frequent than in college football.
Many handicappers tend to downplay the importance of Situational Handicapping when it comes to college football. There are some successful college football bettors who rely solely on Situational Handicapping, picking and choosing their spots based on their evaluation of the mental aspect of a team, such as being ripe for a letdown or being up for a particular opponent or situation.
Technical Handicapping Of all the handicapping factors, this one generally carries the less weight, as it generally makes no difference if Team A has covered five of their last six games as a road underdog of a touchdown or more, especially in college football where some of the players responsible for those stats have graduated.
Technical Handicapping does point to some coaching tendencies, so it shouldn't be completely discarded, but it should never be the sole basis of making a wager.
The Total Package
Steele says that he uses a combination of 50-percent Fundamental Handicapping, 25-percent Situational Handicapping, and 25-percent Technical Handicapping in deriving at his selections, which has obviously worked well for him, as he runs probably the largest sports service in the country.
Personally, for college football, I use a 45-percent Fundamental (Statistical) Handicapping, 45-percent Situational Handicapping, and 10-percent Technical Handicapping breakdown, electing to give more weight to the predicted mindset of a college football team.
There is no right way or wrong way of handicapping, but there are right and wrong predictions. If you're happy with your prediction results, there's no need to change what you're currently doing. If you would like to see your results improve, try adding some pieces of the different techniques into your handicapping and see if your results improve.
