5 Reasons to Start Betting Mid-Major College Basketball

Nothing comes easy when it comes to sports betting. With that being said, not all leagues are created equal in terms of the opportunity to be profitable.

While there are no concrete metrics that can prove this theory, most bettors would agree that the more action a game is going to receive, the more difficult it is to win. This phenomenon is most commonly-seen in the NFL, where it’s a week-to-week struggle to win consistently.

The solution? Find games that don’t receive as much action. In this article, I’ll lay out 5 reasons why you should consider betting mid-major conferences in college basketball.

1 – You Can Get an Edge

Experienced gamblers understand that you aren’t really betting against the house, but rather against the public. The reason is the public ends up setting the final line by the action that comes in once the opening odds are presented.

When it comes to small conferences in college basketball, the general knowledge of the leagues is low. Even those who are fans of mid-major programs usually aren’t plugged into everything that’s taking place with different teams around the league. That means you can get an edge on the public.

The best place to start when you’re evaluating mid-major teams is the previous year. Whereas in major conferences there’s major turnover on a year-to-year basis, mid-majors provide much more stability and consistency in terms of roster and performance overall.

If you’re looking at a conference with 8 to 10 teams in it, it’s not an unreasonable task to gain enough information to put you miles ahead of the average sports bettor. Even a somewhat superficial knowledge of a team is likely going to be more than the majority of gamblers.

If you’ve ever felt like you did your research before making a bet and it didn’t help, I understand your frustration. Rest-assured that mid-major college basketball is one of the rare times when you should feel confident your hard work isn’t going to go to waste.

2 – The Players Don’t Leave

To state the obvious, it’s important to have a good feel for the players competing in the games you’re betting on. Throughout the years bettors have used phrases like, “Don’t bet against so-and-so, they always get the job done.”

More than any other league I can think of, major conference college basketball experiences player turnover at a rate that makes it impossible to keep up with. In any one of these conferences you can expect the best players to suit up for their colleges for a year…if that.

Since the NBA has disallowed players to enter the draft from high school, college has been viewed as a pit stop on the way to the league. Nowadays, however, some players are deciding that playing in college might actually have more drawbacks than benefits.

Regardless, it’s obvious that players aren’t fully engaged when they know that in a year, they’ll be on a much bigger stage. As a bettor, this means you’re stuck trying to figure out which version of a player you’re going to get on a given night.

When it comes to mid-major teams, even the best players typically stay for at least three years, and in most cases, four. If a player is entering college at a smaller school, chances are they aren’t ready for the NBA, and likely aren’t on anyone’s radar. It takes time to build a case for the draft, and mid-major players need to be a star in their league for years to get the attention of scouts.

If you want historical data to have any relevance, stick with the smaller schools that return that aren’t routinely losing starters to the draft after just a year on the team.

3 – Sharp Money Has More of an Impact

When you’re looking at an NFL game, the amount of money required to actually shift the line is astronomical. Even an average 1 p.m. Sunday game will receive millions and millions of dollars in action. Public money might move the line, but sharp money won’t. That’s not the case with mid-major college basketball.

Sharps, or high level sports gamblers, are in on the secret that smaller sporting events can be more profitable. In fact, the money that comes in on many mid-major games is primarily from these individuals. The sportsbook is almost always impacted in some way by their bets in particular.

Reverse line movement is a complicated concept (though definitely worth the effort to become familiar) but it’s important to recognize what you can learn from line movement in general. Often times you can get a feel for where the “smart money” is going just by observing the changes in the odds in the hours leading up to game time. This means you can bet on the side of those who do it for a living.

In almost all cases I would advise against making your picks based on what somebody else is doing. Historically, the public has shown to be hugely unreliable, and even the “experts” that give their picks on TV and the internet typically don’t have the results to back up their expertise.

Following the money is always a smart move when looking at a bet leading up to the start of the event. In mid-major college basketball, this process is much less complicated than it is with other sports.

4 – You Can Specialize in a Conference (or Two)

One of the best ways to make the most out of focusing on mid-major conferences is to select one or two in particular that you can focus on throughout the course of the season.

I don’t necessarily have any advice on which conferences to choose, but I would recommend choosing the ones that you might have some gambling experience with in the past. If you are looking for criteria to help you make a decision, go with the conference where it appears the teams are most evenly matched top to bottom.

Once you’ve made your selection, go back and check out the results from the previous year. This should help you get a good feel for what you’re workin with in terms of the overall talent level at each program.

After you’ve gone through and looked at the league standings from the previous year, find out who the top players in the conference were, and check to see if they’re still on the same teams. In some cases, the top players in a mid-major transfer to bigger schools, so it’s important to get an updated look at the rosters.

You’ll be surprised at how much fun it is to do the deep dive on a mid-major conference. Not to mention, your bankroll will thank you.

5 – The Work Is Rewarded

Basketball bettors have their own culture. It’s complete with an entire dictionary of jargon, its own lens through which sports are viewed, and of course the camaraderie that is felt when you and your buddy live and die with plays down the stretch.

Everything that is fun and exciting about betting on sports is amplified when it comes to mid-major basketball. It sounds counterintuitive at first, but hear me out.

As bettors, most people like to think that the results of their plays shouldn’t simply be viewed as luck. However, when it comes to the biggest events in sports, it really is a coin flip. It’s nearly impossible to get an actual edge over the sportsbooks or the public.

This is not the case when betting mid-major college basketball conferences. Your hard work and research will be rewarded, and luck, while undoubtedly still a factor, is minimized while your knowledge of the teams is maximized.

If you’re a hard worker who loves to see the results of your efforts pay off, this type of sports betting is for you.

Conclusion

To reiterate once more, in order to capitalize on mid-major college basketball you do need to put in the time. It’s unlikely that you’re already going to be familiar with the vast majority of teams in these leagues.

Plug yourself in to the communities that focus on these leagues – I promise they’re out there. Give it a chance and you might find yourself opting for a Horizon League game over Colts vs. Patriots on a Sunday.