Why the spread is the worst bet in all of college football
Often times the spread is the most risky, and most confusing, bet for sports bettors to place. Here is a site with a detailed article that will explain exactly what the spread is and how it works. The spread is the same in all sports, but in football especially, it is often avoided by sports bettors simply because of how small the margin for error is when playing the spread.
Needless to say, college football is extremely unpredictable, which makes betting on a team to win by a certain number of points or to lose by less than a certain amount of points extremely difficult.
We all remember how Florida State entered the season as the No. 10 team in the country before losing each of its first three games and now sitting with just a 1-5 record. For simplicity and conciseness, let?s just take a look at the last three weeks of college football to see how quickly the landscape of this sport that we all love so much, changes. We are now entering Week 8 of the college football season, but let?s take a look over the last three weeks.
Week 5
In this week of college football the No. 7 ranked Miami Hurricanes barely outlasted Virginia Tech 38-34 despite being favored to win by 17.5 points. No. 6 Ole Miss was upset 20-17 by unranked Kentucky while being a 15-point favorite. No. 12 Michigan allowed Minnesota to stay close in a 27-24 battle while the Wolverines were 10.5-point favorites.
Those are just a few examples from a single week of college football that show just how unpredictable the sport can be.
Week 6
Week 6 was undoubtedly the most shocking week of the college football season thus far as seven of the top 25 teams in the nation lost, and six of those losses came at the hands of unranked opponents. The lone outlier being No. 25 Texas A&M destroying No. 9 Mizzou 41-10. Those losses don?t even account for games like No. 8 Miami narrowly beating Cal 39-38 despite being a 10-point favorite.
Week 7
In just this most recent week we saw No. 4 Penn State have to scratch and claw for a comeback vs. unranked USC just to pull out a 33-30 OT win. No. 16 Utah lose to unranked Arizona State. No. 7 Alabama barely escaped with a 27-25 win over unranked South Carolina. No. 8 Tennessee scraped away a 23-17 win over unranked Florida in OT. No 22. Pitt came away with a 2-point win over unranked Cal. No. 23 Illinois beat unranked 1-5 Purdue 50-49 in OT.
Summary
College football is an unfathomably difficult landscape to navigate from week to week, so betting on the spread, unless it?s on a major underdog to cover against a heavy favorite, is almost never a bet that is worth taking. On any given week an FCS school can walk into the house of a Power-5 juggernaut and make them look like a Division II opponent, and that has never been more true than this year.
