When teams meet in the Humanitarian Bowl, Dec. 29, it will kick off a dangerous one-week, 19-game post holiday college football bowl season during which the element of risk will greatly outweigh the opportunity for reward for most bookmakers. On the other hand, bettors will have a real chance to celebrate the New Year in style.
For bookmakers, the danger comes from parlays, an often profitable but always perilous wager wherein bettors string together a series of bets in hopes of realizing a large payoff. The concern for books is that everyone is on the same games. And sometimes, as happened in 1992, the house gets creamed.
Miami was playing Alabama in the Sugar Bowl in '92 and many books went into the game with about the same amount of action on each side. Totals also were well balanced and parlays were even, too. It was a perfectly balanced, textbook write. But books could not win the game.
Computer readouts confirmed that books stood to lose on either the Hurricanes or the Crimson Tide because each team happened to be written into parlays with other teams that already had won their games. So it was a lose/lose situation for bookmakers.
For bet takers, the cruel irony of the bowl season is that while most sports books around the globe will handle less on the 28 college football games than they will on the Super Bowl, their jeopardy is many times greater.
The Super Bowl is only one game so unless books are very unlucky and the game falls on the number, unless the house gets middled or sided, basically, books can lose only what a player wagers on the game. But during the bowl season, a book's jeopardy (and a player's chance for a large return) is multiplied by as many teams as the bettor chooses to hook together.
Adding to the house's apprehension is that limits often rise on some marquee bowl games and many players are wagering larger amounts than usual, hoping to end the year in the black. But shed no tears for the house; books such as
The Greek Sportsbook enjoy the action and are willing to undertake the even greater risks than their clients. Hey, that's why they call it gambling.
However, unfortunately for the house, other than the inherent advantage of the vigorish, bookmakers have virtually no defense against the hot parlay player.
"You can't do anything about balancing out parlays and, really, you don't want to," said one veteran bookmaker. "Parlays are supposed to take care of themselves. But when they don't take care of themselves, they take care of you."
So, how can bettors utilize parlays to take advantage of the compressed schedule of bowl games at the end of this month? One, extremely simplistic approach, merely is to hook up a number of underdogs. Over the past three decades, dogs have won approximately 56 percent of bowl games. Last season, underdogs won 17-of-28 bowl games with one push, a .629 winning percentage.
A more sophisticated approach involves linking a type of underdog, those that are getting more than a touchdown. Teams getting +7 1/2 or more were 8-3 (.727) last season. Among the high-profile favorite-busters were Arizona State (+17 1/2) against Kansas State in the Holiday Bowl; Tulane (+14 1/2), an outright winner over Hawaii in the Hawaii Bowl; Ohio State (+13), an outright victor over Miami in the Fiesta Bowl that decided the National Championship; Air Force (+11 1/2) over Virginia Tech in the San Francisco Bowl; Minnesota (+9 1/2), which beat Arkansas in the Music City Bowl; and Wisconsin (+9), yet another outright winner, over Colorado in the Alamo Bowl.
Why have bowl underdogs performed so well in the past? Some believe that dogs enjoy psychological and motivational advantages over favorites in these situations. They argue that big underdogs have "something to prove" and since they've won at least six games, are familiar with success and aren't intimidated by their opponents. Conversely, while underdogs often are thrilled to be invited to a bowl, big favorites sometimes lack incentive, disappointed that they've been placed in a "lesser" bowl that is devoid of national implications. Some of these favorites have fallen short of their conference titles and may view their bowl visit as anti-climatic to what might have been.
Whether last year's success will translate into dividends this season is anyone's guess. While many bettors swear by such trends, others dismiss so-called "technical handicapping" as little more than "backfitting."
