Totals Week 7 College Football Picks 2014

CollegeFootballWinning.com is a company whose sole focus is college football picks betting analysis. The resulting betting recommendations are based, in large part, on algorithms. Those algorithms are derived by both on-field football performance statistics and betting data. Betting on Totals (€Over/Unders€) in college football might not be as popular as betting on point spreads (€sides€), but wise Totals bettors can profit quite a bit. Week 7 featured 54 games with FBS teams, but only 50 of those matchups had sufficient Totals data for us to analyze. This article is part of a summary of that Totals data. When considering all the listed percentages in this article, the reader should recall that being profitable in college football wagering means winning at a rate that exceeds 52.38%. (Nevada sportsbooks require a bet of $110 to win $100.) Consequently, anything above 52.38% is winning, and anything below 52.38% is losing to the sports bettor.

Week 7 Totals Results
College football bettors love to bet the Over when wagering on Totals. The reasons for that betting propensity can be debated, but the data is objective, lopsided, and undeniable. For the 10 prior seasons leading up to this one (2004-2013), the Over had the public majority (more than 50% of the betting) in 86.2% of all college football games. Now that more college football teams are running fast-paced, no-huddle offenses, betting that already-popular Over might look more appealing than ever before. In Week 7 of this season, the Over went 24-25-1- nearly a perfect split.

From 2003-2013, the average betting Total in college football was 53.33 points. Last season (2013-2014), that average went up to 56.77 points. In Week 7 of this season, the average Total was 56.66 points, exactly 1.25 points per game BELOW Week 6's average. That leap is noteworthy, since the Under was correct in nearly 59% of Week 6's games. It appears that bookmakers may have been concerned that bettors were aware of that profitable figure and would try to bet more Unders in Week 7. We did not stop our Totals analysis at those figures, however. Each week, we consider some extremes. At the low end, when the Total closed under 50 points, the Over was 7-5 (58.33%). At the high end, when the Total closed at or above 65 points, the Over was just 3-6 (33.33%).

Week 7 Public Totals Betting
From the moment betting lines are posted, right up to kickoff, the college football betting market is always changing. Studying how the public bets can be useful. Many sports bettors advise betting against the public, but is that sage advice for college football? We let the data tell the story: Stated earlier, betting the Over is tremendously popular. Week 7 was no exception. The public majority was on the Over in 88% of all games. Here again, we considered the extremes. Overs that had a majority of at least 70% on their side were 9-10-1, nearly an even split. Overs that had a minority of the public betting on their side (in other words, games where the majority bet the Under) were 5-1, so the public was wrong about Week 7's Unders to the tune of 83.33%.

Week 7's Final Analysis

Week 7 seems to be another example of €cat-and-mouse' between bookmaker and bettor. In general, it was hard for either side to find a significant edge. When the public did think the Under was the right choice, the bookmakers truly won that battle. It will be interesting to study the next Totals battle, Week 8, in what tends to be a less decisive war than that waged in picking against the spread.