NFL and college football futures and season win totals present an interesting betting opportunity.
There can be great value in lines that are often hung with relatively little confidence by sportsbooks that can be easily taken advantage of by both quantitative and non-quantitative handicapping approaches. However, futures and season win total bets do also tie up capital for the entire season, so even a bet with high +EV may not always be worth it.
Still, futures and win totals are worth taking a look at, at the beginning of football season.
Quantitatively, stats from the previous season can be used effectively. To start, a method called the Pythagorean theorem can give an approximation of what a team’s record should have been, which may not be exactly what their record actually was. An adjustment can be made on how many points a team should have scored based on their yardage and turnover numbers for the year.
As always, non-quantitative handicapping methods can also have merit, and particularly so with futures lines at the beginning of the season, where factors such as personnel changes and player and program development may not be accurately factored into the lines.
In NFL betting, professional sports bettors do often wait until later in the pre-season to make their NFL futures bets. And the key is line shopping. The odds associated with a win total or a futures bet often vary much more from book to book than other types of bets, and that value is crucial, often meaning the difference between a +EV play and a –EV play.
The actual win number on a win total itself is huge in football, since there are so few games. In college it is even more important than in the NFL, since fewer college games are competitive than NFL games are. Finding a win total that is off by a half-game from what most other books are showing is an enormous find, and will almost always be a +EV bet.
Even if you don’t want to actually bet a future or a win total on a team, knowing what the market is offering and handicapping that line can be a very valuable thing to do. Win totals lines that have value before the season starts often indicate an overall over or undervaluation of a team, and that mis-pricing may also be seen in the lines on a team’s early-season games, which can be taken advantage of until the market catches up. A team with value on a market-wide futures line will usually also have value on their individual games to start off the season, at least for a short while.