4 Ways to Make Money Betting on 2019 College Football Underdogs

We’re less than a month away from the first games in the 2019 college football season. When it comes to wagering on this sport, most sports betting takes place against the spread or against the point total (the over/under). The average bettor needs to win 52.38 percent of the time, because of the reduced winnings that often come with picking the favorites. That also means that if you can pick the right underdogs, you can profit even if you do not win quite as much of the time. We have put together a list of four tips to help you optimize the college football betting that you do on underdogs.

4 Ways to Make Money Betting on 2019 College Football Underdogs

No. 1⃣ @AlabamaFTBL No. 2⃣ @ClemsonFB No. 5⃣ @OU_Football No. 8⃣ @GatorsFB No. 🔟 @UMichFootball Alabama and Clemson lead the way, but who else follows behind? Check out SN’s preseason Top 25. 👇https://t.co/cgXcklYhuH

— Sporting News (@sportingnews) July 29, 2019

Don’t overvalue home field advantage

Particularly in the college game, there is a lot to be said for home field advantage. Players do not have to fret about the stresses of getting ready to get on the road, and they do not have to come out of the tunnel into a hostile environment, when they play at home. Generally, home field advantage is worth three points on a spread, so if the spread has the home team favored by a field goal, that means that the bookmakers see the game as essentially an even matchup. Bookmakers will often slide the odds a few more points in favor of home teams, knowing that casual bettors love to take home teams. The hope for the bookmaker is that beefing the spread like that will lead to fewer covers, which means more losses for the casual bettor. If you look at college football regular season games between 2005 and 2018, the home teams won 58.9 percent of their games straight up. However, against the spread, they only covered 48.8 percent of the time. So if you simply took every home team to cover the spread over that time frame, you would have lost a lot of money. So do the research on each matchup so that you do not end up on the wrong side of a spruced-up line.

Take a look at road dogs in games with low point totals

The casual bettor also enjoys betting on favorites. So a road underdog has value for two different reasons, and if the point total is low, that becomes a third reason. The fewer points that are scored in a game, the harder it is for a favorite to cover a point spread. Between 2005 and 2018, road underdogs in a game with a point total of 50 or less have covered 53.2 percent of the time. In games with point totals of 45 or less, they have covered 54.6 percent of the time. If this is a conference game, this improves to 55.9 percent of the time. Conference underdogs tend to do better because they know each other, and there is more parity. After all, the larger sample included such games as Alabama State visiting Alabama.

Take an even closer look at road dogs in games with short spreads

A “short spread” is four points or fewer, and that sort of game is even more attractive to the casual bettor, because he or she thinks that a home favorite with a short spread is even more of a shoo-in to win. However, road dogs on a short spread covered 54.2 percent of the time between 2005 and 2018. They have won 47.1 percent of the time straight up, which has actually meant that wagering on them has been profitable due to the plus-money payouts that the winners have delivered.

Check out home teams on the short side of the action in heavily wagered games

It is often wise to bet against the public, particularly when there is heavy action on one side of the spread. Between 2005 and 2018, home teams in games with at least 2.5 times the average number of bets for that day while getting no more than 40 percent of the bets have covered 57.1 percent of the time.