College Football Bowl Season Betting Preview

College football bowl season is upon us, and the next month-plus will be filled with all sorts of fantastic matchups to take advantage of. Betting on these games, though, is completely different than your typical nonconference matchup, so let’s take a look to see how to attack these games.

Now or Later

There are two schools of thought when it comes to bowl season. A lot of the sharps ran to snatch up early lines and mistakes made by the sportsbooks. If you are one of those people, you are speculating on who may go pro and if any of the coaching staff is changing. The problem with the early bet is if some of those things happen, you are trying to hedge and/or get out of it completely. I’m on the other side of this debate as I’ll wait until the night before to place my wager because I want the most information possible. The problem with this is that you may not get the best number, but you have the ability to walk away or bet the contest live. Remember, the books have to put out numbers for everything, but you don’t have to bet on them.

Motivation

On face value, you are going to see some games between the P5 and the G5 that seem like complete mismatches. In Week 3, these games would probably be blowouts. But in December, they will be completely different. Motivation is a huge part of the handicap, because the teams that don’t want to be at their bowls will play like it on the field. Teams like Jacksonville State, Old Dominion and Northwestern will be very excited to play in their respective bowl games, while teams like USC, Miami and Florida State may be on the other end. Make sure to read the player and coaching quotes to see what they are feeling about the game.

Changes

Bowl season also features coaching changes and player departures. This goes back to the motivation sectionm because if players really wanted to be in these games, they’d hold off on declaring for the draft or transferring elsewhere. Make sure to keep track of who is leaving and who is staying. You may even have to find out if players transferring out are waiting until after the bowl game as well. For example, there are a ton of JMU players entering the portal, but it looks like a lot of them are going to stay and play out their final contest without coach Curt Cignetti, who went to Indiana.

The bottom line is that if you want to win in bowl season you have to be paying attention to a lot of information both on and off the field.