Betting College Football Teasers

If you’ve read our article on betting NFL teasers, then
you’ll know all about basic strategy teasers and how to use
them. You might assume that the same strategy will work with
college games. This is a dangerous assumption to make though.

There are, of course, many similarities between NFL football
and college football. Some betting strategies work equally well
across both, but some do not. Basic strategy teasers are an
example of the latter, and this is something that sharp football
bettors would probably agree on unanimously.

It would therefore seem reasonable to think that betting
college teasers cannot be profitable, and indeed this a commonly
held view. It’s not, however, an accurate one. Basic teaser
strategy might not work, but that’s not to say that there aren’t
any alternative strategies.

In this article we provide a brief explanation of basic
strategy, and explore why it doesn’t work for college football.
We also look at some alternative teaser strategies for college
football.

Of, if reading isn’t really your thing, we’ve put together a video to help you with everything you need to know about betting on college football teasers:

Basic Teaser Strategy Explained

To clarify exactly why basic teaser strategy doesn’t work for
college football, we should first provide a brief explanation of
what this strategy entails. Remember, this is all explained in
more detail in our NFL teaser strategy article. If you find it
hard to follow, or want more details on the calculations
involved, please refer back to that.

The main idea of basic teaser strategy is to place teasers
that go from a loss to a win on point spreads of three and
seven, at the best odds possible. This is based on the simple
fact that three and seven are the two most common margins of
victory, and therefore the highest value point spreads to use.
Bookmakers generally start their teasers at six points, so the
idea is to place teasers backing any teams that meet the
following criteria on the point spread.

• Underdogs that are +1.5 to +2.5
• Favorites that are -7.5 to -8.5

Two team, six point teasers are typically available at odds
of -110, and in our article on basic strategy for the NFL we
calculated that each selection must win 72.37% of the time to
break even. Considering that point spreads are 50/50
propositions before the tease, teasing must increase the cover
rate by 22.37% to be profitable (72.37% less 50%).

Three team, six point teasers are typically available at odds
of -180, and we calculated that each selection must win 70.95%
of the time to break even. Teasing must increase the cover rate
by 20.95% to be profitable (70.95% less 50%).

Past data for NFL games over a sustained period of time
supports the theory that basic strategy increases the cover rate
sufficiently for the wagers to be profitable in the long run.

Why Basic Strategy Fails for College Football

With college football, the required margins of victory happen
less frequently. The following data highlights this. It’s from
the five season period from 2007 until 2012.

This difference might not seem particularly significant at
first glance, but it means that following basic strategy will
not increase the cover rate often enough for the wagers to have
positive expected value.

Using Historical Data to find Alternate Subsets

We’ve explained how basic strategy involves backing teams
that fall into two subsets. First there are underdogs that are
+1.5 to +2.5 on the spread, and second there are favorites that
are -7.5 to -8.5. Having established that teasing these subsets
isn’t profitable for NCAA football, a logical approach is to
look for alternate subsets that might be profitable. This can be
done by studying past results, known as datamining, and then
testing what might work.

When we did this ourselves, we discovered two alternate
subsets that do seem to work. They’re very similar to the ones
we used when betting on the NFL, but there’s one extra
criterion.

• Underdogs that are +1.5 to +2.5, where the betting total is less than 47.5.
• Favorites that are -7.5 to -8.5, where the betting total is less than 47.5.

One of the reasons why the initial subsets don’t work is
because college games are generally higher scoring than NFL
games. So it made a great deal of sense to look specifically at
those games where the total score was predicted to be similar to
NFL games. That’s why we added in the extra criterion based on
the betting total, as that gives us a good measure of how many
points are likely to be scored.

Based on the same five seasons as used previously
(2007-2012), we found the following.

• 137 games met the necessary criteria.
• Without teasing, the relevant selections covered the
  spread 44.93% of the time.
• With teasing, the relevant selections covered the spread
  78.83% of the time.
• The increase in the cover rate was 33.9%.

This 33.9% increase in cover rates is more than enough for a
strategy using this alternate subset to have been profitable
over that five-year period. It also suggests there is merit in
further datamining to find more alternate subsets that could
work. There is, however, a downside to relying on datamining.

So, although we’ve showed that using low total subsets over a
five-year period would have been profitable, we have to keep in
mind that sample sizes are relatively small and there could be
some freak variance at work. It’s therefore hard to take this
information to the bank. With that being said, the idea to
teaser low total games is logical, and may well be +EV in the
long run. The exceptional results highlighted above are probably
well-padded by variance though.

A Better Method for College Teasers

If you really want to beat college football teasers, then a
better method for the favorites is to remove vig from the
moneyline. This is something we explain in detail in our article
on handicapping the betting market.

Let’s use a game between Ohio State and Michigan as an
example, where the point spread is as follows.

The odds for both selections on the spread are the standard –
110, while the moneyline looks like this.

The no-vig moneyline is -287.27, which has a no-vig win
probability of 74.18%. What this tells us is that the market is
giving Ohio State a 74.18% chance of winning.

However, their point spread was -8, so in our teaser
selection we now have Ohio State -2. From here we need to use
reverse of the strategy covered in our article on buying half
points.

Our database shows about a 2.5% push rate in college football
on the -1 and a 1.8% push rate on the -2. Considering half the
1.8% probability of -2 is in our opponent’s line of +2 and we
both push on that number, then we only take half credit for that
probability (0.9%).

So for Ohio State -2.0 we deduct 2.5% + 0.9% from their
74.18% chance of winning to give them a -2 cover rate of 71.59%.

In the above example teasing Ohio State in a 3-team 6-point
+180 teaser (70.95% required break even rate) is +EV, while
adding them to a 2-team 6-point -110 teaser (72.37% required
break even rate) is -EV.

Final Words

There are many additional tips and warnings you’ll need to
know about to beat teaser betting over the haul. In the intro we
encouraged you to read our article on NFL teaser betting before
reading this one. If you didn’t do that, let us once more
suggest doing so. There’s a lot of valuable information in it
that is likely to make your betting seasons more profitable.

We should also point out that a lot of the material on this
page is fairly complex, particularly the last method just
explained. This is perhaps not something you should attempt
unless you have some considerable experience and reasonably
advanced betting knowledge. You’ll certainly want to read the
other articles linked to give you a broader understanding of
everything we’ve explained.