Early Season College Football Low Totals
One of the oldest sayings in football is that the defense will be ahead of the offense in the early going. The rationale is that it takes the offense several games to get their timing down and find that rhythm. Teams can practice all they want, but there is no substitute for actual game experience.The premise is logical, but unfortunately logic and sports gambling don't always go hand-in-hand. If it did, we'd all be wealthy.
Some games are expected to be low-scoring by the oddsmakers and we'll define those games as the ones with posted totals of 39.5 or lower. They don't happen all that often anymore, as in the past five years there have only been 35 games played in August/September which have seen a total of 39.5 or less.
The oddsmakers will usually have a good reason for posting such a low total. Either one or both teams have strong defenses or weak offenses, or it could be a combination of the two.
But the results paint a slightly different picture, as out of those 35 games, 21 of them have gone over the total, 13 have gone under the total and there was one push.
Perhaps the oddsmakers are underestimating the offenses a bit in the early part of the season, but a 21-13-1 trend (61.7%) is definitely worth paying attention to.
Don't be afraid to take the over in games expected to be low-scoring during September. It's proved to be a wise decision in the past.
