College Football Betting – Trends and Rivalry Games

In the university they have tendencies and in the professionals they have tendencies. However, there is a difference between the two: NCAA teams stay more true to trends than the pros. If a team is
1-11 against the spread (ATS) on the first Saturday in October, most of the time that trend holds. Sometimes it’s funny because it’s like both teams know that tendency and it turns out to be a massacre on a Saturday morning. The scary part is that there are trends in anything and everything! First Saturdays, last Saturdays, morning games, night games, afternoon games, temperature trends, color trends, whether the quarterback or running back had that many yards, the game before the trends, what I mean, they have a tendency for that… and the really scary part is that a lot of the time they’re true. In the college ranks, studying trends is a great way to bet.

Rivalry games play a huge role in a point margin. A lot of times the teams have the same talent and other times one team is really good and the other is pretty bad. But if it’s a rivalry game, the point spreads are usually pretty low, regardless of how good or bad the teams are. A quick example: in 1996, when Jake “The Snake” Plummer was playing for Arizona State and had this great team, they played rival Arizona in Arizona. At the time, Arizona State was ranked in the top 3 while Arizona was struggling to win 5 games.

I assumed the point spread would be in the minus 20s for the state of Arizona. My jaw dropped when I saw the first line: State of Arizona -7. I told myself that it can’t be right, but in fact it was. I thought to myself, even being an alumnus of the University of Arizona, this was an obvious bet, the state of Arizona all the way. Arizona State had a chance to be national champions, and even though Arizona was their rival, it should be a drubbing. During the first half, it was a close game; In fact, I think it was tied at half time. But in the end, Arizona St. defeated them 56-14.

A minus 7 point spread just goes to show how big of a rivalry game it is for a point spread. If you look at the rest of the games in that series since that 1996 game, none of the games are decided by more than 10 points! Rivalry games usually stay pretty close. Look at Florida/Tennessee, those games are usually very close and those point spreads are just as close. Be careful with rivalry games, although one team is much better than the other, it does not mean a sure victory.