Dylan Buell/Getty Images. Pictured: Graham Mertz.
The college football gambling dynamics changed when the Supreme Court struck down PASPA in 2018.
The current landscape allows investors in a handful of states to make legal sports wagers from a number of different operators at any time. This has only benefited the consumers who now get a wide variety of oddsmakers rushing to be first to market in the college football world.
Long gone are the days of Las Vegas being the center of sports gambling as SouthPoint and the Golden Nugget raced to numbers for starved football fanatics.
DraftKings and FanDuel have each posted Week 1 and select game of the year lines. While the concept of win totals, Heisman and national title futures are straightforward wagers, game of the year is a point spread for a select game on the calendar.
There are many angles to attack when it comes to single-game point spreads this early in the year. Many gamblers will flock to brand names like Alabama and Texas. Others will back the hottest name on the market for 2021 in Iowa State. These wagers may pay off in the end, but they are a long-term losing strategy in betting game of the year.
Good to see the Nugget again pic.twitter.com/ZVp2dxMW0C
— Collin Wilson (@_Collin1) December 31, 2015
The goal of betting this type of wager comes down to one factor: How much point spread closing value can you create before kickoff?
Joe Burrow’s visit to Austin in 2019 is one of the biggest examples of setting a power rating number, knowing where the public will come in and when to fire on a game of the year. The consensus opener in the Tigers’ touchdown victory was LSU -7, a number that took so much Longhorns money that certain operators posted Texas -2.5 at one point.
Got roasted over these early CFB February projections:
LSU -8 at Texas
Texas A&M +21 at Clemson
UF -8.5 v MiamiToday’s openers:
LSU -7 at Texas
Texas A&M +20.5 at Clemson
UF -8.5 v Miami— Collin Wilson (@_Collin1) March 19, 2019
As I write this, my cryptocurrencies have shaved 30% off the total value, so it’s important that we mention price point.
Games of the years are my lowest preseason investment in comparison to win totals and conference bets. The sharpest gambler at the counter can do all the mathematics, beat the public and have closing line value of more than a touchdown, but at the end of the day, the games have to be played. Turnovers, injury and weather are all unpredictable for a single game, which is why my higher-volume bets come on season-long wagers.
With that said, there are three college football game of the year tickets I acquired immediately.