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College Bowl Line Moves

Written by Jimmy Boyd

One of the old adages of college bowl betting is to follow the money. This basically means that if the lines makers are adjusting the point spread then there has to be a ton of money on that side of the game, and they want to even out the action by luring bettors to take the other side. Well if you followed the college bowl line moves from the 2007-08 season then you would have lost money. So let’s take a look at what happened and which games fit the system.

There were 32 bowl games this year, and a whopping 11 of them had line moves of three or more points from the opening to the closing number. The general public assumes that if a line moves this much then some kind of professional or wiseguy bettor must be placing a lot of heavy action on a line they feel is off. The bookmakers are then supposed to adjust the point spread to accommodate the action. If a casual bettor sees this kind of movement they normally try to jump on the band wagon before the line moves even more, which only adds to the one-way action and causes even more movement.

This year the line moves were 5-6 ATS, so this system is hardly foolproof.

UCLA started at -3.5 but quickly moved to -6.5 over BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl, but the Bruins ended up losing the game outright 17-16.

Purdue saw heavy action in moving from -4 to -8 against Central Michigan for the Motor City Bowl, but they failed to cover the number as the Boilermakers won 51-48.

Connecticut saw their line drop from +5.5 to +1.5, which is moving past the hot number of 3, but the Huskies ended up losing outright to Wake Forest in the Meineke Car Care Bowl, 24-10.

We hate to see a line pass the zero mark and that’s what it did when Central Florida went from +1.5 to -2.5 against Mississippi State in the Liberty Bowl. Of course the Bulldogs came out on top 10-3.

Georgia Tech saw the biggest movement this year going from -1.5 to a -6 favorite this year in the Humanitarian Bowl against Fresno State. Fresno State came out and embarrassed the Yellow Jackets 40-28, costing bettors a load of cash.

In terms of money actually wagered, the Fiesta Bowl is the big winner. Oklahoma was -4.5 at the beginning but was driven up to -8 against West Virginia. The Mountaineers came out and beat down the Sooners 48-20 which sent the bookies profits soaring.

There were also several games that went the other way, including Florida Atlanta (pk to -3.5) over Memphis in the New Orleans Bowl; TCU (-3 to -6.5) over Houston in the Texas Bowl; Kentucky (-4 to -8) over Florida State in the Music City Bowl; Rutgers (-7.5 to -11) over Ball State in the International Bowl; and Tulsa (-3 to -6) over Bowling Green in the GMAC Bowl.

If you wanted to use the smart money system then totals were the way to go. The line movements on over/unders that moved three or more points hit 9 out of 13 times for the direction the money flowed. The biggest moves were five point swings in the Humanitarian Bowl and International. These two games went over by 13.5 points and 19 points over the closing line that had already moved five points!

If you want to beat the football betting odds this year then sign up for the college football picks offered by Jimmy Boyd and the handicappers on our site. Nobody works harder at winning with their football betting and that is why year after year people come back to sign up again for their NCAA football picks.

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