Twenty-point margins happen every week on a regular basis – even in conference games. Specifically in terms of key numbers, while the same numbers figure to have the biggest impact, the markets just contain more uncertainty in college compared to the NFL. While college football and the NFL are the same sport, they are different enough from a betting standpoint that you can’t simply port all your concepts from the NFL over and call it good. Yes, they do, but the key numbers don’t possess near the impact they do in football and especially the NFL.įirst, let’s get college football out of the way. Do football, basketball and even hockey have key numbers? Do key numbers exist in other sports? Since we’ve been talking about NFL key numbers up to this point, it’s only natural to wonder if the concept extends to other sports. Together, these numbers accounted for more than 40% of decisive margins during the selected sample from this study. Fourteen as well, but since few spreads are near 14, it isn’t as actionable. Note that to a lesser extent, 4, 6 and 10 follow as the next most common margins. Even in 2015, the first year with the longer extra point, 3 and 7 decided more games than any other numbers – although 6 crept way up and wasn’t too far behind. They frequently determine the winning and losing sides of bets.įor reference, check out this study. Teams win and lose by 3 and 7 more often than any other numbers. An easy way to see that is simply look at the margins of victory across some sample of NFL games. If a given game played out 1,000, 10,000 or 1,000,000 theoretical times, it would probably land on every reasonable number at some frequency.īut, it would land on some numbers more often than others. Knowledgeable bettors take them seriously.Īll numbers have at least some impact.

Shifting prices in the markets – for example, a point spread between two teams moving from 3 to 3.5 – represent changes in implied probabilities.

Football betting system indicators