If you could only place wagers on one sport, football might just be your best choice. And if you had to choose between college football and the pros, college is better for many reasons.
When it comes to sports betting, NCAA football is better than the NFL. You’re going to learn five of the reasons why that is on this page.
In fact, college football is not only better than the NFL, it’s also better than any other sport. Picking the best area to focus your sports betting talents is all about profit. Find out why college football is more profitable for gamblers than any other sport or league here.
1 – Predictable Schemes
The main reason why I recommend NCAA football is because offensive and defensive schemes are predictable. The head coach has an influence on the schemes used by each team, but the offensive and defensive coordinators are the ones that really set the schemes.
You might wonder why this is important and why it makes NCAA football the choice if you can only wager on one sport.
The reason why this is important is because anything that you can predict helps you identify value and make profitable wagers. When you know the schemes that the coordinators use and know how effective those schemes are, it automatically helps you place more profitable wagers.
NCAA football is more scheme-oriented than any other sport or league. The best coordinators have success with their schemes no matter where they coach. The main problem is that the best coordinators usually end up getting head coaching positions.
This isn’t always bad, but as a gambler, you need to be careful with assuming that a great coordinator is going to be a great head coach. Head coaches don’t have as much time to work on schemes as they did when they were coordinators. Take a close look at the coordinators that the head coach brings in when they get a head coaching job.
You also need to look at how well different types of schemes work against each other. Of course, talent has a lot to do with how well schemes work. But when two teams with equal talent face each other, the schemes dictate which team wins.
2 – Many Wagering Opportunities
NCAA football is almost as popular with the gambling public as the NFL. This means that you can always find sportsbooks that are willing to take action on college football games. The large land-based sportsbooks and the big online sportsbooks offer lines for every game on the schedule.
This is good because you can usually shop for lines, making sure that you always get the best line on the games you want to wager on. And it’s also good because you don’t have to worry too much about betting limits.
You’re going to have a hard time getting a million down on a MAC game, but you can find a way to get $100,000 down on one if you use more than one sportsbook. And you can probably get a million down on a big conference game using multiple sportsbooks if you need to.
I’m going to cover more about this in the next section, but the other advantage of gambling on NCAA football over the NFL is that the sportsbooks can’t possibly set perfect lines on every game. The NFL has a limited number of games each week, and the sportsbooks have to set tight lines because of the volume of action they take on these games.
In NCAA football, there are too many games on the schedule for the sportsbooks to set perfect lines on every game. The games with the top teams in the country are usually going to have tight lines, but the lines on the smaller conference games aren’t always going to be perfect. In fact, many of them are going to be quite loose.
3 – The Ability to Specialize
You can specialize in the NFL and other sports, but you can really capitalize on specializing in NCAA football. When betting on the NFL, you might specialize in a conference or division, but there are still only a limited number of options. And the sportsbooks can afford to have specialists for every team.
But NCAA football has so many different conferences and teams that you can find some where you can learn more than the sportsbooks. This is where you can turn specialization into profits.
Pick any of the small conferences in college football and start studying the teams. Build sources of information and watch the teams play. It won’t take long for you to see how weak some of the lines on these games are.
This is even true for many of the medium-sized conferences in NCAA football. One of the biggest mistakes that college football gamblers make is focusing too much on the big conferences and most popular teams.
The sportsbooks focus on these conference and teams because they take more action on them. When the sportsbooks make a mistake on these games, it costs them too much money. They can afford to make a mistake on games where they don’t have a big handle.
This is where you can find profits, and you can find them season after season.
4 – The Dominance of the Top Players
A single dominant player in college football can completely change the course of a game. Each team does need a complete team of players to compete. But every season, there are a handful of players who dominate games week in and week out.
Quarterbacks are the first players that most gamblers think about when they think of dominant players, but sometimes, a running back or defensive end is able to dominate games.
Look at how much Chase Young from Ohio State was able to completely change what opposing offenses were able to do in the 2019 NCAA season. Teams had to change their entire game plan because he was so dominant. Even when he wasn’t racking up sacks, he was still changing the game.
Identify the most dominant players in college football every season, and watch how they change each game. Then, determine how to use this information to help you make more profitable wagers.
For example, a team with a dominant defensive end facing a team with a quarterback who doesn’t roll out well creates a lot of problems. If the quarterback can’t roll away from the dominant defensive end, he doesn’t have much chance to lead his team to a win.
Another example is a team with a quarterback who can easily escape the pass rush and turn potential losses into first downs. This can cripple a defense because it keeps them on the field longer and demoralizes them.
5 – Talent Gaps
It’s easy to look up the recent recruiting rankings for NCAA football teams. And you can easily see how the teams with the best recruits tend to be the same teams that end up on the top 10 at the end of each season. But you can still use the recruiting rankings to help you evaluate talent and make a profit.
Here’s what you need to do: Instead of just focusing on the top recruiting classes and teams in the nation each season, look at the recruiting ranking for each team in a league. As you learned earlier, you can specialize in a medium or small league to find value.
So, pick a small league and a medium-sized league and track the recruiting rankings for each team in these two leagues. Don’t worry about where they rank compared to teams in the big conferences. All you need to do is rank the recruiting based on each team in the league you’re focusing on.
Every league has good recruiting teams and ones that aren’t good recruiters. Once you learn which teams are which by tracking their recruiting for several seasons, you can accurately predict which ones are going to perform the best each season.
Conclusion
Most sports gamblers don’t think about schemes, but the predictability of college football schemes is one of the main reasons why it’s the best sport to place wagers on. Anything that makes a sport more predictable is profitable for sports gamblers.
Unlike the NFL, a single great layer can completely alter and dominate a game in college. They don’t even need to be a quarterback. A highly-skilled running back or defensive player can have as much influence on a game as a quarterback.
The final thing that pushes NCAA over the NFL is the availability of recruiting rankings every year. When you know which small conference teams have the best recruits, you can quickly find profitable gambling opportunities.
Michael Stevens
Michael Stevens has been researching and writing topics involving the gambling industry for well over a decade now and is considered an expert on all things casino and sports betting. Michael has been writing for GamblingSites.org since early 2016. …