College Football Betting Lines

Those who are new to sports betting in general are probably wondering what college football betting lines are and how they work. The way a “money line” works is quite simple and the reasons why they are used are easy to understand.

Let’s say that a college football game is happening between two teams, Team A and Team B. If both of these teams are quite similar in terms of their players and their track record so far, it would be quite fair to assume that they would both have an equal chance in winning the game. In that case, whether you would bet on Team A or Team B, it would pretty much mean that you have a 50% chance of winning and would get even money on your bet should you win.

However, things would get more complicated if Team A has many star players and has won the championship for the past several years, while Team B is comprised mainly of rookie players and has never even made it to the playoffs in their history. Since even someone who has done only a basic amount of research on both teams would know that Team A would have a much, much higher of winning the game than Team B. Now this would pose quite a problem for bookmakers, since the majority of people would be betting on Team A. If they would be paying even odds on this game, they would incur heavy losses in the very probable event that Team A wins.

This is why college football betting lines were invented. The money line for the game would look like this:

Team A -300
Team B +270

What this means is that for you to win $100 by betting on Team A, you would need to wager $300 in total. Conversely, if you were to bet $100 on Team B, you would be getting $250 should they win.

What this does is equalize the amount of bets on each team. The bookmaker knows that a lot more people are going to place bets on Team A, as they are the ones who have a higher chance of winning. This is why they give a better payout on Team B, in order to entice as many bettors as possible to place a wager on it knowing that they would get a high return should the underdog win.

While college football betting lines show in units of $100, it is not necessary that you bet exactly this amount. In fact, depending on the rules of the sportsbook where you are placing the bet, you could wager more, or less than $100 and the money line would be adjusted to reflect the amount that you bet. Following the same example, in order to win $10 by betting on Team A, you would need to wager $30 and if you wagered $10 on Team B and they won, you would win a total of $27.