Getting the Edge Betting NCAA Football
College football offers one of the best opportunities to get an edge over the sports books.
The big conferences like the SEC and Big Ten are covered almost as much as the NFL, but the smaller NCAA football conferences have teams based in much smaller markets who receive less coverage.
How to Get an Edge
Here's how this can help you gain an edge:
You can access information that the general public doesn't have.
You can also find lines that offer value because the sports books haven't set them correctly.
Sports books are good at setting lines. Here's why:
It's their main responsibility.
They hire the best minds and use the most advanced statistical methods to set the best lines.
When you consider how many billions of dollars are wagered on sports every year, you should realize how important it is for the sports books to set good lines.
The good news is that they can't set perfect lines on every game during the NCAA football season.
Why not?
They don't have enough time and people to know everything there is about every single team.
But for any college football game, you can find places that will take bets on it.
This gives you opportunities to find profitable sides to bet on in many smaller market games.
Getting Inside Information
Many small football schools are in cities that are small enough that you can form relationships with people involved with the team.
You may be able to get to know coaches or players or even trainers.
Forming relationships with the parents of some of the players or girlfriends of the players is even possible.
How valuable would it be to be good friends with the head trainer for two or three small college football teams?
Wouldn't it be valuable to know when the starting quarterback or star running back is banged up or not going to play?
Don't you think you could use this information to make money?
What about if you knew the starting quarterback was out partying the night before the game?
Since you can reach people involved with the team, you have the opportunity to get inside information.
Is Inside Information Legal?
I'm not an attorney, and nothing contained here is legal advice.
As long as you don't do anything illegal to gather the information, you should be in a safe legal area.
Here are some ILLEGAL ways to gather information, depending on the laws where you live:
- Using wire taps or listening devices.
- Coercing or blackmailing individuals for information.
- Using physical violence or the threat of physical violence to get information.
Never let anyone in the world know what you're doing or that you have any type of inside information.
Keep the people you're getting the information from knowing you're a sports bettor at all, if you can.
Keep whoever you're placing bets with from knowing you have any contacts with the teams at all, too.
If a sports book finds out you're operating with inside information, they may stop taking your bets or stop paying you.
This might happen even if you have done nothing illegal, so don't take a chance.
Other than keeping what you're doing a secret, be careful about the size of your wagers.
The sports books only see a limited amount of betting action on these small market games, so if you bet too much they will start suspecting a game may be fixed or otherwise compromised.
You can't place wagers for $50,000 on small games without creating issues.
Don't bet more than a few thousand at any single place unless you bet on many games at higher levels on a regular basis.
Here's what this means:
To get $10,000 down, you might need to bet at four to six different sports books.
To get $25,000 down you will need ten to twelve books.
Don't make the mistake of thinking you can have one of your friends lay some of the action. The sports books look at all of the money on both sides of the game and will quickly pick up on two heavy bettors on the same side of an unbalanced line either working together or at least having the same information.
If they suspect something they may freeze all payouts until they run an investigation. If the investigation turns up details that may point to inside information they may act in a way that is not in your favor.
Here's an example:
If you find out the star running back won't play and this is not public knowledge, this can look bad when the investigation shows that very few people knew this before the game.
Even if the details don't lead directly back to you, it's possible you could get your source in a great deal of trouble.
If you're willing to place bets online, you can work around most limit issues by wagering at many different sports books. The issue is figuring out how much you can wager without creating any problems.
You also need to find out which online sports books are run by the same parent company.
Conclusion
NCAA football offers opportunities that you can't find in the NFL. But it also offers challenges that aren't present when betting on NFL games.
Start trying to build relationships that lead to inside information and you may find yourself on the winning side more often than not.
