The Importance of Ranking and Momentum in College Football Betting

October 11, 2024 by Staff

While it isn't as popular as NFL betting, college football betting does attract an array of gamblers nowadays.  However, betting on college football is a whole different beast from NFL betting. This is because there is far less consistency in the teams, thanks to most players not sticking around for long (transfer, graduation), oh, and those players do need to focus on their grades a little bit.

This means that you may need to focus on two metrics a little bit more - momentum and ranking. Let's explain what they mean, plus their importance in College Football.

Introducing Ranking

This is a pretty simple metric - teams are ranked based on their wins and losses. Generally speaking, the higher-ranked teams are better than the lower-ranked ones.

This is an important metric when you're betting on college football or, let's be honest, betting on any type of sport. You would normally expect the higher-ranked team to win. Of course, you shouldn't rely on ranking alone, since there are tons of factors at play here. However, it is a really good place to start.
Remember, in College Football, past success is not an indicator of future success. College Football teams can have off years due to poor recruitment, for instance. So, always look up the most up-to-date rankings.

Do bear in mind that you might also find multiple different college football rankings. The vast majority of people will only pay attention to the overall rankings i.e. How the teams stack up against one another from a wins/loss perspective, but if you're serious about betting on college football, then you can look into coach rankings, individual player rankings, etc. It'll take a lot more effort, but you'll be making much more informed bets. That's how you win in this game, you make informed bets.

Introducing Momentum

In our opinion, momentum is a far more important metric than ranking. This is because momentum will let you see how the team is performing now, rather than how they have been performing over a longer period of time. In College Football and most sports, current performance is a much better indicator of future performance.

Momentum can look at both team stats and player stats. But, for the sake of an example, let's give you an example of how it works from a team-winning perspective.

• To determine Momentum, you'll look at the last few results for a team. In most cases, this will be the last 10 results. That's about the maximum. However, you can look at as few as three of the last results.
• You'll take what you learned from looking at the results from the past few games and look at the betting odds. You can then make a more informed betting decision. For example, if a team that is normally decent on the field has had a bit of a rough patch recently, then there is a good chance that while they may have favorable odds for the game, they might not win.
• Don't forget to compare the momentum for both college football teams to get an idea of the result.
• You can also compare the momentum for individual players, which is useful if you're placing a prop bet or something similar.

Many people have suggested that gambling on momentum is a sound strategy when focusing on college football since teams do change quite a bit. It also stands to reason that if a team is on a winning streak, this may continue. However, it would be amiss of us to not point out that momentum may not always be the right strategy.

Studies have shown that positive momentum is not always an indicator of future success. Therefore, one should never gamble on momentum and ranking alone. The only ones who do that are the more casual gamblers with not a lot of cash on the line, which leads us neatly to our final section.

Research Your Bets

Both momentum and ranking in College Football can guide us towards bets that may be worth making. However, they are not the be-all and end-all of making a bet. If they were, there would be a lot of rich college football gamblers out there.

Use momentum and ranking as an indicator of whether a bet may be worth making. However, don't forget to consider other factors such as:

• The head-to-head match-up stats between the two teams, preferably recently. Most online previews will have this info included.
• Whether there are any major injuries for each of the teams.
• Home advantage
• In the case of momentum, how close were the wins? If the wins were pretty slim ones, the team may not be as great as you think.
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Yes. It is a whole lot of effort to place college football bets. However, the only way that you have a good chance of success (outside of being lucky, of course) is to research them properly. The more research you pour in, the more cash you can potentially win.