College Football Betting Value 101

You will often hear quite a debate amongst gamblers as to what the single most important factor is in finding success at college football betting. In the end, however, most successful professionals will tell you that it all comes down to a gambler’s ability to locate value. To put it another way, if value isn’t the most important factor in college football betting, it is a close second to whatever happens to be first.

Anyone involved in college football betting quickly learns about the house’s ten-percent edge before a single wager is made based on the “juice/vig” applied to all side or total pointspread bets. In order to break even against the sportsbooks when betting straight sides or totals, a gambler must actually hit .523-percent of his wagers. Starting with that sobering fact in mind, a gambler must realize that he simply cannot afford to EVER sacrifice value when making a side or total wager on the college football betting lines. Every time a gambler wagers with less than full value he ADDS to the house edge. Conversely, however, every time a gambler gets a BETTER price than is merited he cuts into the house edge and that is VALUE.

Along the same lines on the topic of value, a gambler should realize the simplicity of knowing that there is no value in a loser. Too many times in college football betting a gambler will equate value with a garbage team getting a ton of points. NO, that is NOT value. Good teams that are favorites laying points can be excellent values if they are laying less than they should.

There is no value college football betting value when getting a ton of points on garbage teams. There are truly few things more frustrating to a gambler than to have cash laid out on a helpless team that is constantly making mistakes, powerless at stopping the opposition, and beating themselves, (and you). Of course weak teams will be getting points, often many points from the college football betting oddsmakers, but those points are offered in order to suck in action on the bad team and away from the superior one that everyone naturally wants to bet on. Sometimes the oddsmakers are daring gamblers to not take the right side by setting enticing traps with big numbers on the bad team in the matchup.

This is where so many gamblers end up getting themselves in trouble. They end up outsmarting themselves and getting too “cute” with reaches on inferior teams and lose a lot of money by doing so.

You will find that the most effective gamblers are those who keep things simple rather than those who are “clever” to a fault. An underdog is always the first place to look but he needs to have bite rather than just bark.

The less complicated that a gambler makes his college football betting, the more successful he will ultimately be. It is important for a gambler to avoid “paralysis by analysis” in football betting and to simply define value and go out and get it.