A bettor’s guide to bowl season
Covers.com
I’m already excited about the calendar reading December, and it isn’t because of a bearded fat man and his creepy inquiries about who’s been naughty and nice.
I know I shouldn’t be so excited. I know it’s nothing but a cash grab for the schools involved. And I know that about 20 of the 32 bowl games will have no crowd intensity whatsoever.
But I can’t help it. I love football. And I love betting on it almost as much.
Speaking of which, the spreads and totals for bowl season are already staring us in the face. Some of you have already jumped on them. But here are some intangibles to consider before committing your entire bankroll based on how teams match up on the field.
Long-term lines
College football bettors get into a weekly rhythm during the regular season. Bowl season throws it all off.
Odds for this year’s bowl games were available Dec. 3, meaning some numbers will hang for more than a month. That’s a lot of time for movement and for sportsbooks to open themselves up to middling. But it isn’t a major concern.
“I can’t remember the biggest line move for a bowl game, but I guarantee you it’s not as big as some of the line moves during the regular season,” says Peter Childs, who sets lines at Belmont.com.
I referred to a line-moves article I wrote last year on the eve of the first bowl game and it confirms what Childs says. The opening pointspread had come out two weeks before I wrote the article, yet only two of the 32 lines experienced a two-point shift during the time they’d hung.
Injuries and suspensions
The biggest line moves during the regular season are often the result of injuries.
Making a play on the Michigan Wolverines this year, for example, required bettors to play doctor every week. A change in the health status of Chad Henne and Mike Hart could have triggered a 7-point swing in the line.
The long layoff before bowl games lets us hang up our stethoscopes.
“It’s actually a bit easier (to set lines for bowl games),” Las Vegas oddsmaker Keith Glantz says. “There are various injuries that should be healed by game time as opposed to games that would be playing next week where the injuries are still up in the air.”
So we can assume that players’ nagging day-to-day injuries will heal during the time off. One thing we can’t count on during that period, however, is stellar behavior from players away from the field and in the classroom.
“A group of kids could miss curfew or even get arrested, that could have a major impact on the line,” Childs notes. “Then there’s the academically inactive players. Some players failed some courses this fall and the school could declare them inactive for their bowl game. The opening lines can’t and don’t factor those situations.”
Check out the Alamo Bowl, in which the Penn State Nittany Lions and Texas A&M Aggies will clash. The Aggies had two players arrested the day after PSU players were ordered to stand trial after a preliminary hearing. Keep your eyes on the court dockets!
Coaching changes
Sideline switches are another off-field distraction that have already flared up since the season ended. Glantz pays them no mind.
“I don’t take any coaching changes into account,” he says about how he sends lines to sportsbook clients. “How can you get into the heads of the players to see how they’ll react?”
Valid point. Trying to guess how a group of young men will respond to absence of the man who recruited them is a dangerous game for bettors to play.
All the same, there are different types of coach-change scenarios playing out across the country. Some are worse for players than others. I’ll address those in a separate article.
Timing your bets: Handicappers vs. the rest of us
Wise guys often have two betting strategies: one for themselves and another for clients.
A lot of the pros can’t use the opening line for bowl games because so many bettors save their action for the few days leading up to kickoff. Trying to sell people on a +7 opening number when it has since fallen to +4 is a good way to lose clients.
For that reason, many handicappers hold off before selling picks on bowl games until the handful of days before the game. It’s crucial in their line of work to recommend numbers that their clients can actually find.
With their personal betting, however, sharps won’t hesitate to jump on opening line they like. It helps that they can usually anticipate which way a line will move. However Covers Expert David Malinsky points out how the same approach can be troublesome for non-professional online bettors.
“Any time an advance wager is made it means that the amount of that wager is unavailable until the game comes in,” the handicapper says. “That can sometimes cause problems with all of the NFL and basketball that take place in December.”
Bettors with a limited bankroll, then, have to weigh the pros and cons of jumping on early lines. They might end up with money on the best price, but is it worth it if they tie up their entire account in the meantime?
A neutral-site advantage?
When it comes to the bowl games themselves, the game’s setting has to be taken into consideration.
The New Mexico Lobos have an obvious edge, playing in their home stadium in the New Mexico Bowl. The Houston Cougars won’t take to their home turf in the Texas Bowl, but they’ll at least play in their home city.
Other schools hold an advantage even in another city, like the LSU Tigers playing in New Orleans.
“They played in the Sugar Bowl last year, I’m sure many of the kids that play for LSU have played high school all-star games or playoff games in (the Superdome),” Childs says. “LSU has a huge ‘site’ advantage and that kind of advantage has to be considered when setting the lines.”
Motivation
Schools may approach a bowl game with varying levels of motivation based on what happened at the programs in recent months.
The California Golden Bears faded down the stretch and had to “settle” for the Armed Forces Bowl. The likely unmotivated Bears will face the Air Force Falcons, who have never been accused of mailing in a game in the Academy’s football history.
How things turned out last year can also affect a team’s approach. The Oklahoma Sooners were embarrassed in last year’s Fiesta Bowl by the small-conference Boise State Broncos. The Sooners return to the same site with a chance for redemption this year.
Finally, bettors should recognize that some players look at bowl games as an audition for next year. Texas Longhorns head coach Mack Brown announced after the regular season that the Holiday Bowl would serve as an open audition for next year’s spots. That could lead to some surprisingly spirited performances from younger Longhorns in a game that means nothing to so many other people.