Low Totals and College Football Underdogs
The game of college football has changed over the past 20 years as more coaches have gotten away from the "three yards and a cloud of dust" mentality. The game is definitely more wide-open than it used to be, and "pass" is no longer consiered one of the four-letter words by coaches.Naturally, as a result there has been more scoring in recent years than there was previously and that has made its way to totals. In the five-year period between 1986 and 1990 there were 18 games with a total of less than 35. The last time there was a game with a total that low was the Penn State at Ohio State game of 2004.
Now, we have to change our definition of a low total. If we use anything under 40, we'll come up with about 20 games a year. If we extend it to anything under 44.5 or less, we'll have roughly 120 games a year, which is still a relatively small percentage of the roughly 820 lined games we have each year.
If we take a look at how underdogs have performed in these games, we'll see that they have definitely covered at a decent clip. Using 39.5 points as our figure, we'd see that in the past five years underdogs are 55-46-1 against the spread, which is a decent 54.5%. Underdogs in games where the total is 44.5 or less have gone 337-275-13, which comes out to 55.1%.
The second number translates to a profit of 34.5 units over five years, which is almost seven units a season for a pretty basic system.
If we want to boost our winning percentage slightly, we can concentrate on underdogs of 15 or more points, which have gone 67-52-4 over the past five seasons, which is 56.3%.
In today's day and age many people will scoff or turn up their nose at a method that "only" produces winners at a 55 to 56% rate. Professioal gamblers aren't among them however, and would be the first to tell you to jump on a wager that has such a winning percentage. That's probably why they make money and most people who wager on sports don't.
Even if you don't want to follow along with the plays, I would definitely think twice before wagering on large favorites in games with low totals.
