Ultimate CFB bowl betting guide
— -- It's easy to get overwhelmed amid the myriad college football bowl games that will be played between Dec. 20 and Jan. 4. But fear not, Insider is here to help. We've asked our experienced group of gambling experts, including Chad Millman, Dave Tuley, Phil Steele, Evan Abrams, Brian Edwards, David Solar, Wunderdog and Sal Selvaggio, what they're focused on during bowl season.
Below we provide:
Chad Millman's seven rules for betting bowl games.
Vegas Rankings of every bowl team.
The best system bets for this bowl season from David Solar of Sports Insights.
Handicappers' five best ATS bets, SU bets, O/U bets and potential upsets.
Top five public teams according to Jay Kornegay of the Westgate Las Vegas.
Enjoy and good luck this bowl season.
Key links:
All odds courtesy of the Las Vegas Westgate sportsbook as of Tuesday, Dec. 16.
Chad Millman's Seven Bowl-Bonanza Rules
Here's a primer that outlines the factors professional bettors consider when wagering on bowl games. Quotes are courtesy of Kenny White, the current COO of Don Best Sports, and Vegas vet Bryan Leonard.
1. How a team ended the regular season: "Were they on a run to make the bowl, or did they lose a lot?" White asks.
2. How much excitement a team will have headed into the bowl: "You're looking for a team that is thrilled to be there and looking forward to the game," White says.
A subset of No. 2 is bowl experience, but not for the reason you think: "I'm more likely to give a team a higher ranking if it hasn't been to a bowl for a while because that will generate excitement among the program and fans," White says.
3. How much time off a team has had before the bowl: "When you are not playing, it's hard to simulate game speed. It's like driving on the highway at 30 mph," White says.
4. The weather on schools' respective campuses: "The SEC, Pac-12, even the ACC tend to do better in the bowls than the Big Ten, Big 12 and Big East," White says. "I think the warm weather has a lot to do with that. Thirty days of practice in warm weather before a bowl game helps you get a lot more done than practicing in a bubble or outside in a cold climate."
5. Throw away any games against non-bowl competition. "What you want to do is see how a team stepped up in class," Leonard says.
6. Emphasize a team's road performance over its home performance.
7. Consider how the conference is doing in bowls.
CFB Vegas Rankings
The CFB Vegas Rankings are the composite power ratings of a panel of professional handicappers and college football statisticians, including fellow Insider Phil Steele, Vegas handicapper Brian Edwards and Bruce Marshall of The Gold Sheet. The ratings are meant to compare the relative strength of the teams if they were to meet on a neutral field, which is what we get in bowl games (except for rare cases).
It's not surprising that our No. 1 and No. 2 teams are Alabama and Oregon, and all three handicappers gave the Crimson Tide and Ducks those ratings. Where we saw a difference was in the No. 3 and 4 spots; some liked Ohio State then TCU, while others liked TCU then Baylor. Just like the College Football Playoff committee, there was a simple difference of opinion when it came to team value.
To show how close these rankings are, Alabama is ranked a perfect 50, but there are 11 different teams within 10 points of Alabama and 19 different teams within just 12 points of the Crimson Tide.
Our combined power ratings have Alabama as five points better than Ohio State (the Tide's 50 rating, minus the Buckeyes' 45) in the Jan. 1 Allstate Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, and Oregon 4.5 points better than Florida State in the Rose Bowl Game Presented by Northwestern Mutual in Pasadena, California.
Here are all of the teams participating in bowl season, and how Las Vegas sees them:
Value plays
For our value plays, we had six bowl games that had a difference of four points or more between the Las Vegas point spread and the difference in the two teams' CFB Vegas Rankings.
Georgia Tech (+7) vs. Mississippi State (Dec. 31 Orange Bowl)
Vegas Ranks line: Georgia Tech +3
Georgia Tech ended the season on a six-game ATS winning streak and faces a Mississippi State team that just came off a loss against its rival, Ole Miss, in the Egg Bowl after a tremendous start to the season. How motivated will the Bulldogs be?
Kansas State (PK) vs. UCLA (Jan. 2 Alamo Bowl)
VR line: Kansas State -4
After winning four straight to start the season, UCLA lost two in a row, then won five straight before an awful performance against Stanford. How can you trust UCLA?
Northern Illinois (+10) vs. Marshall (Dec. 23 Boca Raton Bowl)
VR line: Northern Illinois (+5.5)
NIU won its last seven games of the regular season, including a game against Western Michigan, where it was an 8-point underdog. Northern Illinois has been in this position before, and Marshall has failed to cover its last three games entering bowl season.
Florida State (+9) vs. Oregon (Jan. 1 Rose Bowl)
VR line: Florida State (+4.5)
To both the pro-Vegas bettor and the casual gambler, Florida State, a team that has won 29 straight games, getting nine points is pretty crazy. The last time Florida State was this large of an underdog was in Week 14 of 2009 against Florida (plus-26).
Ohio State (+9.5) vs. Alabama (Jan. 1 Sugar Bowl)
VR line: Ohio State (+5)
The Buckeyes haven't been this big of an underdog since Week 4 of 2011 at Nebraska (plus-10). Urban Meyer has not been this big of an underdog since he was the head coach at Utah against Texas A&M in 2003. Meyer is 4-0 as an underdog at Ohio State, which makes this an interesting angle.
Wisconsin (+6.5) vs. Auburn (Jan. 1 Outback Bowl)
VR line: Wisconsin (+1)
The handicappers believe this is a simple overreaction to the last time the nation saw Wisconsin play. Getting blown out by Ohio State 59-0 in the Big Ten championship game has inflated this spread; according to the handicappers, this should be around Auburn minus-1.
-- Evan Abrams
Picks, Picks, Picks
Best Bowl-Season System Plays from Sports Insights
Bowl season is the holy grail of the sports calendar. This is a time for celebrating the holidays with family and friends, knocking back a glass of eggnog (which, let's stop kidding ourselves, is really just a socially acceptable way to drink pancake batter one month every year) and engaging in binge football viewing.
With an abundance of bowl games, many bettors feel obligated to lay down a wager on every game. Concepts of money management and selectivity are often disregarded during bowl season, although many trends fall in line with those we've observed during the regular season.
We preach the importance of betting against the public and taking underdogs in games with low totals. Our stance is rooted in experience: One reason underdogs fare particularly well in low-scoring games is that less scoring naturally leads to closer games, which disproportionately benefits the team getting points.
Betting against the public is a subject we've discussed ad nauseam, but it certainly bears repeating: The public loves to bet on favorites and overs, which makes sense since it is human nature to root for winners and scoring. Sportsbooks understand this and shade their lines accordingly. Sharp bettors are able to then capitalize on these artificially inflated lines by focusing on teams that are being ignored across the marketplace.
Our historical database shows that since 2005, the average college football total is 53.66 points. Using that baseline, we define a low total as any game with an over/under of 54 or less. With this in mind, we created a new betting system using our Bet Labs software, which focused on all underdogs with low totals receiving less than 40 percent of spread bets during bowl season. This criterion produced a system with a 48-28 ATS record (63.2 percent) with plus-17.18 units won and a 22.6 percent return on investment (ROI).
Typically we prefer a larger sample size when creating a new betting system; however, with a limited number of bowl games in our database, this system has proved to be profitable during the regular season as well.
Here are eight plays that match this system:
1. Gildan New Mexico Bowl: UTEP (+10) vs. Utah State
2. San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl: Navy (+3) vs. San Diego State
3. New Era Pinstripe Bowl: Penn State (+2.5) vs. Boston College
4. Advocare V100 Texas Bowl: Texas (+5.5) vs. Arkansas
5. Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl: Notre Dame (+7.5) vs. LSU
6. Foster Farms Bowl: Maryland (+13.5) vs. Stanford
7. Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl: Houston (+3) vs. Pittsburgh
8. Taxslayer Bowl: Iowa (+3.5) vs. Tennessee
-- David Solar
Jay Kornegay's Top Public Teams
The five teams that have taken the most bets over the course of the season, according to Kornegay, lead bookmaker at the Westgate Las Vegas, and his staff:
1. TCU
2. Alabama
3. Ohio State
4. Michigan State
5. Mississippi State