Why Football Betting Is So Hard

You Really Have to Pay Attention When Football Betting

Football betting is hard. There are many different ways to approach football betting and every handicapper seems to think his way is the best. As a football handicapper you have to keep a level head and not bet with emotions. Easier said than done. Below we go over some key issues to become a quality football bettor.

Key Points

– If football betting was easy, more bettors would win more often.

– A number of factors make football betting difficult.

Football Betting Is Hard

Making predictions, especially regarding the future, is difficult. That might sound familiar if you know who Yogi Berra is. It’s an important point to remember in sports and in sports betting.

Any sporting event’s result is incredibly challenging to forecast correctly. Betting would likely lose all of its charm if it were simple.

There are some sports where predicting winners may be a bit easier than some others. As a whole though, identifying winners in sports, especially football, is hard. Why?

Play the Favorite

In both team and individual sports, bettors have the chance to predict winners. You can wager on a particular NFL team to win or a particular golfer to win a certain tournament. Some winners are easier to pick than others.

Bettors can take the easy route and bet on favorites. They are supposed to win, right? In soccer, favorites win about 50 percent of the time. It’s a little bit higher in baseball. Favorites win 60 percent of the time in MLB.

The problem with those numbers is that the average bettor will likely end up losing money. Hitting even six out of ten bets could put a bettor into the red after paying the juice on all the wagers.

Even if you were able to win around 70% of the time in any sport, it might not be enough. If you just bet on the moneyline, hitting seven of ten bets might leave a bankroll in the red. Successful gamblers are aware that consistently placing bets on favorites can result in losses.

A strong understanding of odds is necessary if bettors wish to succeed in football betting. Here are some football betting markets to target.

Forecasting the Future

A smarter bettor essentially makes one of two types of predictions when he places a wager on the outcome of a sporting event. It could be a combination of both but one type of prediction is the intuitive prediction. This is one based on intuition and experience.

For instance, Pitcher A consistently performs well against Team B. He typically goes at least seven innings and has never allowed more than two runs in a start versus Team B. It makes sense to wager on Team A to win. It may also make sense to bet on Team A to cover on the run line and possibly even make wagers on the First Five.

There is also the statistical prediction, which is obviously based on data and perhaps even an algorithm. Team B bats just.184 against pitcher A, and his ERA against them is 0.96.

Using these statistics alone, a bettor could make a prediction. He could produce a more precise prediction by combining his gut feeling – intuitive prediction – with the statistical facts. The issue is that, despite being more accurate, the prediction is still influenced by other variables.

Sometimes making the logical sports betting choice isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Football Betting & Travel

It is something that football bettors must consider. Teams travel to play away games. NFL West Coast teams like the San Francisco 49ers struggle when playing East Coast opponents. From 2003 to 2020, teams from the West Coast went 95-138 straight up when they played a team from the east.

Why exactly do teams from the West struggle when traveling to play a team from the East? The time difference might be a factor in some of it. Another possibility is that traveling will disrupt a team’s routine. Whatever it may be, travel is a component that makes predicting sporting events challenging.

Football Bettors! Become a Profitable NCAAF Teaser Bettor!

The Injury Report

How many times have you placed a wager only to have a star player suffer an injury in the middle of the game. A few years ago, the Houston Texans were one of the NFL’s best defenses. In the same game they lost three-time Defensive Player of the Year J.J. Watt and LB Whitney Mercilus. Needless to say, the rest of the season was a disaster.

Injuries are definitely part of football games and they have a huge impact on game outcomes. When it’s a quarterback that is lost with an injury, the impact is even greater.

There are times, however, when teams rally around the loss of a key player. The Philadelphia Eagles lost their quarterback, Carson Wentz, yet rallied behind Nick Foles to win a Super Bowl in 2018.

Injuries ultimately have an impact on NFL games and bettors should be aware. Read your injury reports if you want to have more success in football betting.

If you’ve read the reports, injuries, breaking news and everything else available and are still lost, maybe look at a teaser. Go read what is a teaser and how to bet them.

Bye Weeks & Rest

Football is a violent sport. It’s taxing on the body, and athletes need time to rest up after playing the previous week. However, there are occasions when one NFL team will get more time off than its next opponent.

Every year, the Detroit Lions play on a Sunday, followed by a game on Thanksgiving Day, just four days later. Not much time has passed between games. Sometimes the Lions’ opponent may have had a Thursday night game before. That may not seem fair, but it is the reality of NFL football.

The Lions have occasionally struggled with their little rest and lost badly on Thanksgiving. Other times, the Lions overcame the challenge of lack of rest and somehow managed to win.

Again, football bettors must consider how much time teams have off between games; this is an element that makes forecasting results difficult.

There are plenty of reasons to bet offshore this football season. Go check them out.

Football Betting – Big Games

In the NFL, a divisional matchup is far more significant than any other. The outcome of a divisional game can have a significant impact on the tiebreaker for a potential playoff spot.

Rivalry games in NCAA football typically bring out the best in teams. Games that help to determine a conference champion or a division champion also have more on the line than other games.

Predicting a game’s outcome can be greatly aided by understanding how much it means to a particular team or player. Understanding what might motivate a certain team in a given situation makes it particularly difficult to predict a game’s outcome.

Trying to pick winning bets is a challenge. It always will be. That’s what makes sports betting great. It’s that challenge of trying to win more bets than you lose.