Michigan vs. Ohio
State. Alabama vs. Auburn. The best rivalries are often the ones that pit neighbor
against neighbor, brother against brother. With no pre-season schedule and a
built-in rivalry system, college football is about as good as it gets!
Monday’s
game was supposed to pit in-state rivalries Miami Hurricanes against the Florida
State Seminoles - a game that I predicted would be the biggest regular season
college football game ever; but, Hurricane Frances has forced its postponement.
It had a Monday Night Football time slot and it was scheduled to run on ABC.
It was going to be huge.
The kick-off classic
last weekend saw USC taking on Virginia Tech. Although USC struggled through
the first half, their talent eventually turned it on and they went on to win
the game in the end.
That first game
of the year has got to scare the living daylights out of coaches. You have 11
or 12 games in your regular season, six to eight of them will be mandated by
your conference, and the other 3 to 5 games you set up on your own. So you’ve
really got to pick that first game wisely.
If you pick a team
that isn’t very good and you beat them badly, then your respect level
is at risk and the BCS polls won’t give you any credit because you’ve
simply beat a team that you were supposed to beat.
On the other hand,
if you pick a team that’s too good and you lose – then you’re
out of it and you don’t have a chance at the national championship. One
hour into your season and it’s all gone - that’s got to be terrifying.
The catch is to find that middle ground.
Rock, Paper,
Scissors
There’s no
doubt that football fans in general prefer to watch a good Monday Night Football
game to a mediocre college game; but, some of those big college games (like
the Miami-Florida State game) are going to be as big a draw as any NFL game
this year. With almost 120 college teams to choose from, there is definitely
a lot of exciting football to watch.
We take in about
25 to 30 percent more action on the NFL than we do on college football as a
total. However, last week’s USC vs. Virginia Tech game was really something.
We saw more public action for that one game than any other event post-Super
Bowl. Considering how high the spread was that game and how much action there
was, it’s really rather encouraging for the rest of the season (high spreads
tend to discourage wagering slightly).
The beauty of college
football is that there are so many contrasting styles. With college football,
you’ll get teams that run the ball 80 percent of the time or throw the
ball 90 percent of the time. Styles overlap and it can become a rock-paper-scissors
type of a game. Team A will beat Team B, Team B will beat Team C, and Team C
will beat Team A.
With the NFL, it’s
more of a chessboard style of play; you’ve got the same sort of players
on both sides lining up on either side of center field. The team that executes
the best game wins. Because teams are so similar, it’s kind of easy to
compare styles. There is so much parity in the NFL that it’s like comparing
apples to apples.
NCAA’s
Busy Schedule: Advice for the Novice Bettor
Let’s say,
there are 35 games being played on a Saturday. If you try to handicap all 35
games, you’ll lose your mind unless you are very experienced. Trying to
narrow it down to a few games until you can get a system in place (like a good
spreadsheet) will make it easier for you.
Pick a conference
or two and really get started on that. In any conference, you’re only
going to have about four or five games on any given week and that’s a
pretty manageable amount. If you live in Los Angeles, for example, you will
probably want to start with the Pac 10. You’ve got great rivalries, lots
of press, and all the information you’re going to need. Then, you can
move out from there.
When you pick two
conferences you’ve got about eight or ten games a week and when that becomes
manageable, you can bet on three conferences, which puts you in about the same
as the NFL where you’re looking at 15 games a week.
Using Polls
as a Betting Tool
The polls are really
the only indicator that a novice bettor has and they’re very strong influencers.
Of course, what we’re talking about here are the Bowl Championship Series
(BCS) statistical rating system, the Associated Press (AP) Top 25 Poll, and
the Coaches Poll.
The purpose of
the BCS is to determine the two top teams who will participate in the Division
1-A national championship game. Effective this season, the AP Poll, Coaches
Poll and computer ranking system will each count for one-third of a team’s
overall BCS ranking.
That said, if an
unranked team is playing a number-one team, for example, you can count on seeing
their A-game out on the field. And that’s the best part about college
football – the rivalries. The fight songs (Boomer Sooner is my favorite),
the tailgate parties and the exciting styles of play make college football a
beautiful thing.
rob@bodog.com
Rob Gillespie
President
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