Two weeks into bowl season and our second annual Bowl Betting Bonanza series (check out BBBI and
Bettors love SEC teams during bowl season. But their second favorite
money making conference will surprise you. Check out the latest
installment of Right Angles to see which BCS conferences you can count on most at this time of year.
Get Smart
"Historically, playing that philosophy pans out for bettors," Orleans bookmaker Bob Scucci told me in my podcast this week. But history took a backseat to reality in 2010, as Boise State, Louisville, Troy, BYU, Northern Illinois and San Diego State all covered the spreads as favorites.
The second week of bowl season saw things return to form. Tulsa, FIU, NC State and Iowa all won their games as outright underdogs. In fact, of the five games between Dec. 24 and Dec. 28, the only favorite to cover was Air Force, which was minus-3 over Georgia Tech and won 14-7.
Now, we head into Week 3 of bowl season. (Seriously, three weeks of bowl season that takes place when most schools are on vacation. Anyone think that maybe we could fit a stinkin' playoff into this scenario?) That brings us a couple of more factors wiseguys consider when betting on postseason games. For a refresher, here are the tips outlined in BBBI and BBBII.
1. How a team ended the regular season: "Were they on a run to make the bowl or did they lose a lot?" says veteran handicapper Kenny White, who used to run the oddsmaking service Las Vegas Sports Consultants.
2. How much excitement is a team going to have headed into the bowl: "You're looking for a team that is thrilled to be there and looking forward to the game," White says.
A subset of No. 2 is bowl experience, but not for the reason you think: "I'm more likely to give a team a higher ranking if it hasn't been to a bowl for a while, because that will generate excitement amongst the program and fans," White says.
Another subset of No. 2 is playing 'dogs before the Jan. 1 games and favorites after, again because of each team's motivation for being there. Beware exceptions, though. Potentially Oklahoma.
3. How much time off a team has had before the bowl: "When you are not playing it's hard to simulate game speed. It's like walking on the highway at 30 mph," White says.
4. The weather on a school's respective campus: "The SEC, Pac-10, even the ACC tend to do better in the bowls than the Big Ten, Big 12 and Big East. I think the warm weather has a lot to do with that. Thirty days of practice in warm weather before a bowl game helps you get a lot more done than practicing in a bubble or outside in a cold climate," White says.
5. Throw away any games against non-bowl competition. "What you want to do is see how a team stepped up in class," Vegas vet Bryan Leonard says.
6. Emphasize a team's road performance over its home performance.
And now, for the last two factors in our tutorial:
7. Consider how the conference is doing in bowls. "The SEC teams always get a lot more play, especially when SEC teams start killing everyone in bowls. Also, Big Ten teams get faded," Scooch says.
8. Strength of schedule matters. "Sometimes there is no other way to tell the difference between two teams with identical records," says another longtime wiseguy, Vegas Runner.
Next week we'll take all these factors and apply them to the BCS title game combatants -- Oregon and Auburn. Until then, here's what sharps Brian Edwards, Teddy Covers, Kenny White and Sal Selvaggio from madduxsports.com have to say about the last batch of bowl games.