How to Handicap College Football Bowl Games
The average bettor looks at college football bowl games with the thoughts and images carried forward from the regular season. However this approach will not lead to a profitable bowl season most of the time. Just like handicapping other sports, there are keys to analyzing these games than just the records from the regular season and player match-ups, but the average bettor fails to realize this strategy.
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Let’s take a look at what factors have the biggest impact on predicting college bowl games from a point spread perspective.
MOTIVATION – There are widely varying degrees of motivation for these bowl teams. Last year’s bowl games are a perfect example of this fact. Missouri collapsed at the end of the 2008 season, despite having BCS bowl and potential national title aspirations. They ended up in the Alamo Bowl in a less than exciting match-up against Northwestern. As a result, the Tigers gave an unmotivated effort against the Wildcats as a double digit favorite and needed overtime to get the win. Another example of how motivation effects bowl games is the Music City Bowl where Vanderbilt faced Boston College as a 5 point underdog. The Commodores were playing in their first bowl game in a very long time, and in their backyard of Nashville, TN.
Meanwhile, Boston College had lost the ACC Championship Game against Virginia Tech and missed out on an opportunity to play in the Orange Bowl. Consequently, Vanderbilt came out with a much more focused and motivated effort, which enabled them to get the outright win as an underdog.
LOCATION – Teams playing a bowl game close to their school have done very well over the years. Last season teams playing close to home went 9-6 against the spread in their bowl games. South Florida, Florida State, Rice, and USC covered rather easily while playing within a short distance to their school. However, Georgia Tech, Hawaii, and California failed to cover the spread despite playing close to home. Overall, the location of the game should be a part of handicapping bowls, but should not be relied upon as the main factor when deciding to make a wager.
The location does have some impact but will not make up for a heavy favorite not bringing a strong effort or a better team dominating an opponent that they strongly outmatch.
CONFERENCES – One of the biggest things to consider when analyzing a bowl game is the conference each team is from. Many times one of the top teams from a lesser conference such as Conference USA, WAC, and MAC will face one of the last teams to get into a bowl from conferences like the SEC, Big 12, and PAC 10. In addition these teams from lesser conferences are sometimes favorites as just because of their better record.
The public is also hesitant to back these teams with worse records because they have seen their opponents do well all season, not considering that their wins came against lesser quality competition. Some examples of this theory from last bowl season are Kentucky beating East Carolina and Arizona beating a ranked BYU teams.
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