Prop Bets And Football Futures
What song will Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band open with during the Super Bowl halftime show?
That’s just one of the crazy proposition bets that you’ll find as the football season draws to a close. The market is fairly quiet right now – on the board at press time is the race for the 2008 Heisman Trophy, plus the usual championship futures odds on the BCS, the Super Bowl and the NFL’s two conferences. As we get closer to the big games, betting interest will soar, and so will the number of wagers available. About half the Super Bowl betting handle (which is estimated at $6-10 billion worldwide, or $100 million in Nevada) will come in the form of prop bets.
Why the interest in a type of bet that some sharps consider “for entertainment purposes only”? Timing. The end of the season is when the championship futures bets pay out, so a wager placed now will only sit idle for a few weeks, compared to a few months. A smart bankroll is built on reinvesting earnings; you can’t reinvest money that’s in limbo.
The risk involved in a futures bet also minimizes as the field of contenders shrinks. Only five teams are left in a position to qualify for the BCS Championship Game in Miami, and the USC Trojans (20-1) need some kind of bizarre harmonic convergence to get in. A bet on the Oklahoma Sooners at 5-4 to win the title (or on QB Sam Bradford at 4-5 to win the Heisman) is at its most secure right now, in the last week of college football’s regular season. After this, the two BCS teams will be named and the futures market will boil down to a simple moneyline bet.
The props market is a different beast. The number of options for college football will explode as the bowl invitations are finalized, while those Super Bowl props involving the actual game itself will flood the market once the AFC and NFC champions are determined. These props range from standard fare (how many passing yards will Quarterback X have?) to the kind of offering at the top of this column.
NFL football props in the Bodog Sportsbook.
The allure of these bets is no mystery: They pique the interest of the betting public. You don’t need to know anything about football to bet on the outcome of the opening coin flip – and there will be a lot of that kind of money floating around out there. By carefully sifting through the props market, you can profit on even the most outlandish bets.
First and foremost, identify those bets where you can improve your chances by improving your knowledge. There is no point in studying the coin flip, for example, and at the typical –105 price, this wager should indeed be solely for your entertainment.
Second, consider focusing on the bets that have an either/or option, like over/unders or player matchups. Some props look more like the futures market; for example, Super Bowl XLII had a player prop asking who would score the first touchdown. The list included 18 players, with the “field” priced at 7-1. You can certainly study the scoring patterns for the players on both teams and try to pick out which players are underpriced. But betting on the result of one hypothetical play in a single football game exposes you to a lot of risk.
Placing a familiar either/or bet is a simpler and cleaner exercise. Expect a player matchup like Bradford vs. Missouri’s Chase Daniels to hit the props market for this week’s Big 12 title game. Who will pass for more yards? You can use much the same data you would use to handicap the game itself. Remember: time is money, and both need to be spent wisely.
