College Football Picks

Football is no doubt the most popular sport to bet on in the US and while College Football betting isn’t as big as the NFL, it’s growing and the sheer volume offered is impossible to ignore. In order to make intelligent CFB predictions, you must put in countless hours and a ton of effort. This means sending emails to beat writers, watching hour-long interviews, etc. That’s what I’m here to do so you don’t have to. We pride ourselves on bringing quality predictions that have been well-researched and well-explained. With sports gambling increasing its foothold in the US, football will continue to be the number one sport to bet on and we’re here to help you through it all. 

The most common way to bet on football, whether the NFL or CFB (College Football), is against the spread. That is the (+) or (-) you see next to a team’s name. For example, if the Clemson Tigers are favored to win by 14 points over the Baylor Bears, the line would look like this:

If Clemson wins by exactly 14 points, both sides of the bet push and you get your money back. Let’s say you want to bet on Clemson. In order to win that bet, they must win by at least 15 points. If you want to take the Baylor side, the Bears must either win the game or lose by 13 points or less. These lines will move all the way up to game time and it’s your job to jump on when it adjusts in your favor. The (-110) you see next to the spread is what you have to pay to win $100. In most cases when betting the spread, that number will be between 105 and 125.

A crucial part of betting the spread is looking for the best spread on the particular bet you’re looking for. This is called shopping for a line. In College Football, it’s not rare to see books be two or three points off. For example, a team might be favored by 15.5 points at one book and 17.5 at another. You’re doing yourself a huge disservice to not take the two-point value. 

You’ll often see much bigger spreads in College Football than you will in the NFL, and you have to make sure you don’t get scared off. While a 40-point spread might look intimidating at first glance, the level of competition in College Football is not always equal or even close to it and there is more room for error when the line gets that big.

Betting the total in College Football refers to picking whether or not you think the combined total of points scored between the two teams in the game will be over or under a certain number. This number is set by the sportsbook, not you, and will adjust throughout the week just like the spread. For example, let’s say a game between the Auburn Tigers and Florida Gators has a total of 53.5. In order for the under bet to win, the two teams must combine for 53 points or less. For the over to hit, the teams must combine for 54 or more. 

Much like betting the spread or money line, the total will differentiate from book to book. You’ll want to shop around to find the book that has the line most favorable to you. When betting the total, there are a number of factors to consider. While the books will be accurate when it comes to the team’s pace and playstyle, there is often an advantage to be had if you pay attention to the weather and up to date with news. I will beat books to the news constantly in CFB, which will never happen in the NFL. 

Betting the money line is another common bet amongst all sports and it refers to choosing the winner of a game straight up, without a spread. Instead of gaining an advantage with a point spread, sportsbooks will charge you money to bet on the favorite and they’ll give you some to bet the underdog. For example, let’s use that same example as above with the Clemson Tigers vs. Baylor Bears. Let’s also assume that the spread would be -7 still:

The team that is favored will always have the (-) next to their name and that number represents how much you will have to bet to win $100. In this case, you’d have to bet $360 on Clemson to win $100 back. The team with the (+) is the underdog and that number is how much you’ll win if you do bet $100. In this case, a $100 bet on the Bears would result in a $260 win. It is far more common to see bets on the underdog in this case as folks don’t love to pay the extra juice.  If you don’t want to worry about how many points a team wins or loses by, the money line is for you. 

You’re likely familiar with parlays if you’ve bet on any other sports in the past. This is the way you can turn just a few dollars into thousands. A parlay is when you combine anywhere from two to fifteen single bets into one large wager – one in which your odds will go up exponentially. It’s a win-or-take all approach as you must win every one of these bets. If you lose one, you lose the entire parlay. In the case of one of your bets pushing, that individual wager will be excluded from your card and your odds will adjust with said exclusion. These can be spread bets, total bets, or even props bets. 

Prop betting is an extremely entertaining and fun way to bet as the result of your bet is not reliant on a certain team winning or scoring a certain amount of points. Instead, you’re betting on one player to either do something or not. Here are a few examples:

Will Player X throw for O/U 285 yards?

Will Player X have O/U 74.5 receiving yards?

Will Player X throw an interception?

Each one of these bets will have different lines, meaning the books will be taking a different amount of juice depending on how many bets are coming in on the other side. I prefer jumping on player props early in the week before everyone else gets their hand on them. This is often thought of as a fantasy football bet as many will correlate their CFB prop bets with the players on their CFB fantasy teams. Prop bets have gained in popularity with College Football fans in the last few years and there has been a ton of value to take advantage of if you have the time to dig in and find it. 

If you’re unfamiliar with College Football, there is a four-team playoff to determine a champion and then another 38 bowl games that are coveted by all teams in the country. There are levels of bowl games, meaning some are far more prestigious than others. We’ll break down every one of these in an extremely detailed way, laying out multiple strong bets to make for each game. These games will begin December 10th and span to January 8th. The biggest day of the bowl season is on New Year’s Day when six big games are played. These games all typically involved top-25 teams facing off with one another, along with one of the playoff games. We’ll have you covered from every angle for the upcoming College bowl season. 

If you’re making the transition to College Football betting from NFL betting or any sport for that matter, there are a ton of differences to be aware of. There are some similarities of course, as we’re playing the same game and teams have the same goal (to outscore their opponent). The differences are glaring, however, and the first to focus on is the lack of information available to not just College Football bettors, but the books as well. In the NFL, every factor is known about every aspect of the game and books are able to make extremely accurate lines. That’s not the case in College Football and there will be plenty of opportunities to take advantage of mispriced matchups that books are paying less attention to. 

Amount of teams/games

You’re only working with 32 teams in the NFL and a maximum of 16 games per week. It’s a completely different picture in CFB as there are 129 FBS teams and another 125 FCS (A-II) teams. You’ll see up to 80 games a week, taking place all-week from Tuesday to Saturday. This gives you nearly 8x more options when looking for a game to bet on. It also puts a lot more on the sportsbooks plate and there is no way to be perfectly accurate in every case. The pure volume of College Football is something to adjust to if you’re used to betting NFL games. 

Less Available News

This is where the biggest edge is to be had when betting on College Football. Naturally, there is a fraction of the news available in CFB as there is in the NFL. Every single NFL team has a handful of reporters that are paid just to cover that one team and their weekly opponent. There are many lower-level CFB teams that are covered by only local newspapers and college students. Whether you expect a certain player to sit/play or simply know something that the books don’t, there is a huge edge to be had. There is far less attention paid to details in CFB and there is money to be made if you take the time to pay attention. 

Books are more often wrong, or at least “off”

This is a bit misleading as sportsbooks will always try their best to be as accurate as possible. With that being said, there is far less money being bet on the average College Football game compared to the NFL, so it only makes sense for them to distribute their effort to where the money is. The maximum bet on a CFB game is also a lot lower, so one sharp bettor with unknown information can only hurt a book so much. When news releases, there has been a countless number of times I’m able to get a bet in before the book is able to adjust. 

Blatant Talent Gap

This might be obvious if you’re a fan of both the NFL and CFB. There is a system in place in professional sports to evenly distribute talent throughout the league. This is the point of a yearly draft, as well as the salary cap and many other restrictions. Those don’t exist in College Football, and there’s nothing stopping a team from having the 25 best players in the country if they can figure out a way to get all those guys to want to play there. You’ll often see teams matched up that don’t belong on the field together and it’s even more common to see in between individual matchups.  

Pick your poison

We have just 32 teams to stay glued to in the NFL, and it’s not too tough with the countless hubs that are trying to shove any type of news they can down your throat. That’s not the case in College Football and it’ll be up to you to do a lot of hard work. There’s no perfect answer to the “how many” question, and it all depends on you as a bettor. Many gamblers will only focus on one Conference, while some focus on the entire Power 5 (SEC, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-12). 

Others think that’s foolish and stay away from the entire power 5, where the most information is up for grabs. Those guys would rather lurk the lower-level games and look to take advantage of mispriced games. If you look hard enough, there are enough games in College Football to find weekly value. As I said, there’s no right answer to this question and it all comes down to what you prefer and are comfortable with. The only wrong answer is picking random games willy-nilly and then trying to research them each week. Get familiar with your card. 

Lower-Level Early-Season Underdogs 

A game between two stalwart Power 5 conference teams is not what I am talking about here. The books know those teams almost as well as they do the NFL and those lines are going to be far more accurate in the long run. What is impossible to figure out is just how good some of these lower-level teams are after adjustments were made around the country in every building. There isn’t a ton of info coming out of these camps and it’s a bit of an unknown to everyone how they will perform when they actually strap up. 

There’s a big advantage to be had in betting two lower-level teams where one is a sizable underdog. Just to show how clueless books can be early in the season, the new-look Navy Midshipmen were one-point favorites over the BYU Cougars in game one of the 2020 season. BYU ended up winning the game 55-3. Sportsbooks were assuming Navy would look similar to the last four seasons, which wasn’t the case as they lost one of the best QBs in school history. BYU dominated from the jump and underdog bettors were pleased. 

Gather info from strong sources

I’ll be here to provide you with College Football picks for every big and small game this season, and you can count on me getting my information from reputable, efficient sources. There are a lot of opinions floating around the CFB world and you don’t always gain much insight when reading someone who is essentially a fan of the team. It’s our responsibility to dig deeper and do the hard work ourselves. Sometimes that means pulling up the game tape of Coastal Carolina and seeing how they handle pulling guards or if they will shadow a WR1 or not. These are things that most casual bettors ignore, and it’s eating into your bankroll every time you look the other way. Whether you want to do the hard work yourself or rely on me, just make sure the information you’re relying on is accurate and timely. 

At USSportsbonus, we pride ourselves on covering every sport from a detailed, well-researched angle. Make sure to come back for not just CFB, but any other sport you’re looking to bet on.

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