College Footall's Top 10 Underdogs
This article is a companion article to College Football's Unranked Favorites in which we looked at how teams ranked in the AP's Top 25 did against the point spread when playing an unranked team that was favored.This time, we're simply looking at teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 10 poll when they are underdogs against unranked teams.
The concept of taking good college football teams is hardly a new one. The late Mort Olshan, of the Gold Sheet fame, had a system that he referred to as "Power Underdogs," which simply was a list of what he felt were the top 20 or so college football programs. The premise was simply to wager on any of the teams on his list when they were made underdogs.
Taking good football teams as underdogs makes sense for one basic reason, which is the team has an excellent chance of winning the game straight up, but if they happen to lose outright, many times it's a narrow loss, which has the team covering the point spread.
Top 10 Teams as Underdogs
Over the past 10 seasons, teams in the AP Top 10 were 11-6 as underdogs and an impressive 9-8 straight up when playing a non-ranked team.Over the past 20 years, top 10 underdogs are 20-11-1 and 18-14 straight up, so these situations don't happen often, but they are worth jumping on when they do occur.
