R.B. Dressler’s College Football Betting Picks: Week 1 Insights & Wisdom

Broncos, Badgers, and Quotes from Bill S.

And so It begins.
College football season is here again.
Class is back in session.
My favorite time of year.

“Once more unto the breach.”

“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.”

“Sound trumpets and let our bloody colours wave. And either victory or else a grave!”

“I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked,
or my betting account monies be emptied!”

Only one of those lines is not from Bill S.
Guess which one.

Okay, time to get serious. We have work to do if we’re going to make a profit this season.
As we begin, of importance to remember is this – there are TWO components necessary to Beat your Book:
Handicapping skills
Money management skills
Discipline
Okay, three. There are THREE components necessary to Beat the Books:
Handicapping skills
Money management skills
Discipline
A database/logbook to chart and track your plays

Those are the three, I mean four, there are FOUR components necessary to Beat your Book:
Handicapping skills
Money management skills
Discipline
A database/logbook to chart and track your plays
And luck

Luck is necessary, so FIVE! There are FIVE components necessary to Beat the Books! (Anybody reading this should, by now, recognize the riff from Pythons “The Spanish Inquisition.” If not – stop reading this and go watch it immediately! But come back when you’re done though.
I’ll wait.

And now back to the point of this column – wagering on college football games.

Here’s something you might want to write down because you don’t want to rely on memory skills to remember it four months from now.
I use three different methods for identifying teams as WF’s (Wrong Favs.) For bowl games they had a combined record of 22-12, 64% last year.
Here are the full records for these plays:

• Play #1: 14-5, 73% (three year record)
• Play #2: 20-10, 67% (two year record)
• Play #3: 19-10, 65% (two year record)

DID YOU KNOW… YOU CAN BET ON GAMES AT -105 ODDS INSTEAD OF -110? IMAGINE HOW MUCH MONEY YOU’D BE SAVING! BET SMARTER! MAKE THE SWITCH TO BETANYSPORTS!

Combined record 53-25, 68%.

This will be the fourth year for Play #1, the third year for Play #2 and #3.
Does previous success guarantee similar results this year?
No.
This is sports betting. Head coaches change, players change, trends change, and rules change. Nothing is guaranteed.
But am I looking forward to using them this year to find out if they’re successful again?
Hell yeah!
You might want to make a note on your calendar to stop back here during bowl season so you can find out, too.
And jump in on the fun if they’re winning again.

I

n addition to those three plays, I’ve been tweaking and perfecting my various college football handicapping formulas for almost 20 years now. I’ll be sharing those here, too.
All season long and, as always – free.
FREE – that’s how we roll here at PredictEm!

Today’s play:

Western Michigan/Wisconsin Under (wait to buy it.)

Obviously I don’t have a lot of data to work with since it’s the first week of the season. The first couple weeks of any sport is difficult because you don’t really have a lot of stats to work with. And this is especially true of college football in these days of the transfer portal. You can give a little weight to coaching tendencies but not so much for the teams themselves because of high player turnover.
So where did I get this Under play from?
I took the Under based on my database of the past four years on this particular play (I’ll post the record in my next column, as well as the reason why it’s not in this one.)

The line opened at 53 and is up to 56′ now, you can even find a rare 57. Whenever a line is moving in my favor I wait until game day to buy it. If it’s moved more than a couple points though I’ll buy it the day before the game because there is often a late buyback from people looking to try for a middle.
I have my screens up all the time, watching the lines, monitoring the games I have circled for plays. If the line goes up I’ll keep waiting, if the line start to drop I grab the best number available, in this case the common number 56′.
I’ll post the final number I get in the PredictEm forum.

I use two different size units for college football. Regular bets are investment plays for me, using a standard unit. Action/TV bets are smaller bets for when I want to have a rooting interest on games I’m going to watch on TV.
I am a strong proponent of not varying the size of your bets, but if you’re betting a game just because you want to watch it on TV and not because you have strong stats to rely on then you should bet less on it.

Until I get some data to use I’ll stick with action size wagers (except for my Oklahoma bet, which has years of data behind it for a week one play. See my article dated June 18th.)

Good luck to you all this football season!

Open bets:

Oklahoma – 40′ (regular size unit)
W. Mich/Wisc Un (action; wait to bet)
USC Reg Season Wins Un 7′ (action)