re: College Football Week 1/Futures Bet Thread

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Just use your football knowledge and keep up w/ what's going on and you'll have a good idea what to play. Spreadsheets can't account for game day type variables.

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Using plain "football knowledge" will get you beat in the long run. It might work in the short run for a random weekend in Las Vegas, but to have any chance whatsoever of grinding out a profit you need to have at least some hard numbers to go off of.

The main use of my spreadsheets is comparing previous spreads. I.E. how did Team A with a rating differential of XXX from Team B with the line at XXX line perform. I then calculate the profitability of the bet using that information. I.E. Team A, with a rating differential of Team B of XXX. So I look for all matchups in my database where teams were within 0.25 Standard Deviations of the ratings differential, with a line similar to the line posted, and calculate the results against said line.

So if the result is 11/20 ATS, thats 55%, minus 52.4% which is a profitability result of 2.6%. Or if the result is 18/20 against covering a 10 point teaser, that is 90%, 10 point teaser legs must hit at 81.8% to profit, so thats 8.2% profitability in a 10 point teaser.

It's very crude, and probably not worth much, but it at least gives me something concrete to go off of to counter my personal biases when analyzing a game.