College Football Dogs and Home Dogs
Bettors often talk about underdogs. How have dogs done over the past few years in college football? And what about "home dogs?" Table 1 shows the results contained in our database since 1998. We purposely show results over individual years to highlight how performance can jump around -- even over entire seasons.
Table 1 – College Football Dogs and Home Dogs
Period Dogs Home Dogs
1998-2006 50.1% 51.8%
2001 52.4% 49.3%
2002 50.2% 50.0%
2003 48.3% 51.4%
2004 52.1% 60.2%
2005 51.4% 50.7%
2006 51.0% 48.7%
Last 4 Years (2003-2006) 50.1% 52.5%
Here are some key "takeaways" from the chart:
The results continue to validate previous academic research -- that there is a bias towards underdogs, and in particular, home dogs.
The results show that although there is a bias, the sports marketplace is relatively efficient, so that the vig is difficult to overcome.
Performance can fluctuate dramatically. Similar to the investment world, past performance is not necessarily an indication of future results.
In this article, we highlighted all 2003-2006 periods in yellow to make comparison more convenient amongst the various approaches and tables.
Home Dogs Getting Points
Table 2 shows the performance of Home Dogs receiving a given amount of points. The past two years have been mediocre for this strategy.
Table 2: College Football Home Dogs Receiving X Points
Period 0.5 or More Pts 3 or More 7 or More 14 or More
2003-2006 52.5% 52.4% 52.4% 52.9%
2003 51.4% 52.7% 52.8% 51.0%
2004 60.2% 58.0% 61.2% 57.4%
2005 50.7% 49.1% 45.9% 46.2%
2006 48.7% 50.0% 49.6% 56.8%
Betting Against the Public -- on Home Dogs
Last year, we saw that combining "Betting Against the Public" with betting on "Home Dogs" -- was a profitable betting strategy. We updated this information to include the 2006 season and present the results in Table 2's format for comparison purposes.
Table 3: College Football Home Dogs and Betting Against the Public (30% Level)
Period 0.5 or More Pts 3 or More 7 or More 14 or More
2003-2006 54.7% 53.4% 53.4% 54.7%
2003 60.0% 58.7% 58.5% 53.1%
2004 60.6% 58.8% 59.3% 56.8%
2005 51.0% 48.3% 47.6% 53.1%
2006 50.0% 50.0% 50.6% 56.8%