College Football Handicapping Articles

Here are all the current college football handicapping articles from Maddux Sports.

What Sharp Handicappers Do In the Summer To Prepare For the Season

If you are like me then the biggest sporting activity of every summer is counting the seconds until the next college football season starts. While college football bettors can get very impatient in the dog days of summer, there are a lot of things they can be doing to sharpen their knowledge and prepare themselves to be ready to find the edge next season - especially early on in the season when most people won't have done their homework ad won't be prepared as a result. Here are six good ways for college football bettors to spend their summer ...

What You Should Look For in College Football Spring Games

Every spring college football fans are inundated with news from spring games. We can even watch more and more of them every year as they show up on TV to satisfy hungry fans. Calling most of them games is being generous - they feature adapted rules and even scoring systems at times, and coaches typically don't hesitate to get right on the field if they need to. A lot of what happens at a spring game doesn't mean much, but there are a few things that smart bettors will want to keep an eye on because they can give us clues about how prepared a t ...

How College Football Preseason Polls Can Help and Hurt Handicappers

The major college football preseason polls are out. Every year when they come out I immediately rush to absorb what they have to say. Soon after, though, I find myself thinking about what they mean and the impact that they have for bettors - both positive and negative. Here's a look at how the polls can be helpful, and how they can cause bettors - especially more casual ones - some problems. ...

Evaluating Returning Starters Stats And Using Them To Your Advantage

We constantly hear about the importance of returning players in college football. The biggest reason why Boise State is so good this year is because virtually all of their players have played together before. Why are Florida and Texas struggling in the face of major expectations? Well, a major loss of personnel starting at the quarterback hasn't helped either team. ...

Tips For Handicapping First Year Starting QBs

Early in each college football season there are countless issues that can cause headaches for bettors that need to be considered. One of the more challenging is determining whether a new starting QB is ready to be a strong contributor from the start or if betting against him is going to be an attractive option. Here are eight questions to ask to help evaluate how strong a QB might be out of the gate. ...

Common Mistakes College Football Handicappers Make

I don't think that there is a better sport to bet on than college football. There are so many games each week that you can find something attractive no matter what you like to bet on, and the lines are usually not nearly as tight as they are in the NFL. It can be a betting gold mine, but it can also be very easy to make mistakes that will harm your chances of being profitable. Here are six of the biggest mistakes casual college football bettors make. ...

Tips For Crushing Early Season Non Conference Games

I'm not sure that there is a time in any sport that is better for making money with relatively little risk than the first two or three weeks of the non-conference season. Teams aren't game tested, and most bettors haven't done the work required to be ready for the season, so the lines are soft and value is available in full supply. To cash in, though, you have to know where to look, and you have to be willing to put in the work that most bettors won't. Here are five places where you can often find nice value in the early non-conference season. ...

Tips For Picking Which Games To Bet On When College Football Betting

When you are thinking about betting on college football you have two general options. You can bet on the high profile games that everyone will be watching, talking about, and betting on, or you can instead go for more obscure games featuring ignored teams from lesser conferences that are well off the public radar. There are advantages and disadvantages of both types of games for bettors. Here's a look at four advantages of each. ...

Dissecting Blowout Games In College Football

I love almost everything about college football. In my eyes there is no better sport on the planet. There are just a very few things that I don't like about it. One of them tends to happen most in the first couple of weeks of the season - when top level teams from BCS conferences play virtual exhibition games against FCS teams. There are a handful of BCS teams that can give BCS teams a good contest, but for the most part it's just a massacre. I don't take any pleasure at all in watching a team lose by 50 points, and I don't gain any respect fo ...

How To Pick College Football Games With Big Point Spreads

In non-conference play it is very common for good teams from the top conferences to schedule games against badly outclassed opponents from weaker conferences. Since there is no preseason in college football teams use these games to work out the kinks, build confidence, and give young players game experience in a relatively low stress setting. These games are rarely exciting to watch, and they often feature very high scores. They also typically involve very high point spreads - spreads of 30 points or more are quite common. Point spreads that b ...

How to Handicap Teams Off a Demoralizing Loss

So far this college football season we have already seen some truly demoralizing, soul crushing losses. I'm talking about games where a team goes in with high hopes, yet comes out trying to figure out how they lost by 20. Or 50. If the team that gets blown out is a generally lousy team then it's not that hard for bettor's to deal with them going forward. It's when a team seemed decent going into a game and then gets blown out, though, that really makes handicapper's head hurt. How do you deal with those teams next time out? Here are six questi ...

Adjusting Handicapping From Non Conference to Conference Games

We have seen teams play other opponents in their conference in college football in each week since the start of the season. We are at the point in the schedule, though, here conference games start to become more of a rule than an exception. In many ways football is just football, but there are key ways in which handicappers have to make adjustments when handicapping conference games compared to when picking winners in non-conference contests. Here are four ways in which handicappers need to adjust. ...

Betting on College Football Games Involving Top 25 Teams

There is nothing in college football that gets more attention than the polls. Where a team is ranked and how they are moving in the polls is a topic of endless discussion, debate, and arguments. Used properly and logically, the polls can be a useful tool for bettors - especially those who don't pay really close attention to college football. If you don't use them logically, though, then there are even more ways that the polls can cause you problems and lead you to bad decisions. Here's a look at both sides. ...

How to Gamble on CFB Games Involving Gimmick Offenses

One of the challenges of handicapping college football is the presence of gimmick offenses. Gimmicks don't really work in the NFL, but coaches like Mike Leach (before he got himself fired) and Paul Johnson have built successful careers out of doing what no one else is doing. Year after year their offenses have worked to pile up massive amounts of yards, and to put big totals on the boards and win more games than their recruiting should probably allow them to win. Determining how a team is going to play against a quirky, pass-heavy offense like ...

Making Winning 1st Half College Football Picks

Betting on halves in football can be more attractive in a lot of ways than betting on whole games. When you are only betting on 30 minutes instead of 60 then there is less time for the unexpected to occur, and fewer things that can work against you. First half bets can be particularly attractive because, unlike betting the second half, you have several days before the game to handicap and look for value spots. When you are betting on the first half in college football the easiest way to find value is to look for situations that are likely to c ...

How To Win More Of Your 2nd Half College Football Pick Bets

On the surface betting the second half in college football games seem like a great idea. After all, before you have to lock up your money and make a bet you get to watch the entire first half, or at least see the stats to get a sense of how the game is going. While the bets are attractive for that reason and others, the problem is that you have a very short amount of time to make a decision, and it can be particularly challenging on a busy day when a lot of games are at the half at the same time. That doesn't mean that these bets aren't worth ...

Common Mistakes Bettors Make When Betting College Football Totals

Betting totals in college football can be a very lucrative undertaking if you do it properly. When a lot of people are betting on the sport, though, they consistently make simple mistakes that cost them money and make what should be a very profitable bet. Here are seven mistakes to avoid when betting on college football totals. ...

Finding and Picking Teams That Are Going To Outperform Expectations

We are two-thirds of the way into the college football season - more in several cases. In most cases we know about how good most teams are by now. More importantly, by this point the general betting public feels very strongly that they know what teams are like and what to expect from them. There is an opportunity to be had, then, every time that a team performs better than they are perceived to be capable of. One type of team that can perform like this is one that started the season playing poorly but is quietly rounding into form. Because of ...

How To Handicap Teams With Coaches On The Way Out

We're at the point in the college football season - about two-thirds of the way through - when it becomes clear that there are some coaches who are coaching their final games with their team. Some schools will fire their coaches in-season - a couple have already this year - but more often the schools will keep the coach around through the season in an attempt to minimize the disruption of the change. It's not hard for handicappers to spot situations like this, but it can be much harder to figure out how a team is going to react. Sometimes a te ...

Handicapping Advice For College Football Rivalry Games

We are nearing the end of the college football season. That means one fantastic thing - rivalry games. The most storied programs save their most hated opponents for the end of their schedule. That makes for spectacular spectating. It also makes for very interesting handicapping. In some ways these games are just the same as any other football game - you still have to move the ball down the field and get it in the end zone more often than your opponent does. In some key ways, though, rivalry games are different, and they need to be looked at di ...

Spotting College Football Teams That Have Quit on the Season

We are in the dying days of the college football season - most teams have just one or two games left. At this time of year it can be very profitable to be able to spot teams that have packed it in - those that just don't care anymore. Those teams are likely to be underdogs, and often serious underdogs, but often times they play badly enough that they easily lose by far more than the spread facing them - especially if they are playing a good team. Here are six ways to spot a team that could be on the verge of quitting. ...

How to Handicap College Football Coaching Changes

The end of each college football season means that there are a stunning number of coaching changes. Guys are fired because they don't meet expectations, and the dominoes start to fall as people move up to better jobs, coordinators become coaches, and so on. Typically, nearly a fifth of jobs change coaches every year. That's a lot of change for handicappers to stay on top of - new coaches bring new philosophies, new schemes, and new coordinators, and they recruit different types of players. ...

Conference Championship Game Handicapping Tips

We're heading into conference championship weekend - including what could potentially be the last Big 12 championship ever. In most ways conference championship games are just like other games - or at least other games with a lot at stake. In some key ways, though, these games are different. Smart bettors will recognize these differences and look for ways to exploit them. Here are six of those ways. ...

End of Season College Football Handicapping Tips

When the college football season ends most sports bettors just move on to the next sport. If you really want to be successful with your betting, though, you need to take a little time to look at what happened last season, and what you can do next season to improve your bottom line. Here are five quick ways you can look back at the bets you made to learn from them and see what mistakes to avoid. Most of them rely on you having records of the bets you made and how they turned out to look back at. If you aren't keeping records of each bet you mak ...

We hoped enjoyed these articles, more college football stuff can be found on our blog. We will be diving into the bowl games as well but here are some additional articles on betting college football and tips to win!


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