Betting on Bowl Games

Bowl season is the best time of the year for college football fans. While the best teams in the country compete in games like the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl, the top two teams play for the title of national champions. In addition, dozens of other teams play in games that, while perhaps not notable on a national level, can mean the different between a successful season that makes their fans and alumni happy and a long and unhappy wait for next season after a loss.

Bowl games also make for great betting. Not only do the teams have a month or more to prepare for their games, but so do you! There’s ample time to do plenty of research and analysis, looking for the teams that are undervalued and avoiding those who are overrated by the public (and the bookmakers). Here are a few ideas on how you can find winning bets during the NCAA bowl season.

College Bowl Betting Strategies

One of the most critical things that any successful college bowl game bettor needs to do is figure out which teams are going to show up for their games motivated, and which ones are more interested in taking a vacation. A team that isn’t giving it their all is likely to get upset by a weaker team, or blown out by a more evenly matched opponent.

Often times, picking these teams out can be quite easy. A team that typically plays in high profile games but has had a relatively bad year may end up in a small, unimportant bowl game. These teams are often unmotivated for these games, seeing as how the successfulness of their seasons is usually judged on winning their conference championship or a BCS bowl game. Playing in a third-rate game two weeks before New Year’s Day isn’t likely to bring out the best in them. On the other hand, smaller schools that rarely manage to get into the postseason can pretty much be counted on to show up no matter what level of bowl game they find themselves in. This is doubly true if they’re playing a team from a major conference. While this isn’t a rule that you can turn into a system, games where a team that rarely gets into bowl games is playing in a non-BCS bowl against a traditional power should often get a second look. You’ll often find a lot of value from betting on the underdog.

However, if you are looking for a system for betting on NCAA bowl games, one quite successful one is to simply bet on all the underdogs you can find! Perhaps because of the motivation that lesser teams feel heading into bowl games, underdogs tend to overachieve in bowl games. This is especially true among large underdogs, who perform especially well against the spread.

One very successful system takes advantage of this by simply betting on every bowl game underdog of six points or more. This method has proven successful year after year, and will give you plenty of games to bet on come bowl season. If you’d like to play more conservatively, the record for teams getting 10 or more points is even better, though there are fewer games that fit into this category. No matter how you do it, betting underdogs will usually end up paying off at the end of the NCAA football season.