Pre-Season Vs. Regular Season NFL Betting
Usually, parlays are a very risky sports wager. To win a traditional parlay, you must select the outcome of two or more games. If you are wrong on even one game, the book keeps your money, stacking the odds highly in their favor. Parlays are always going to be in the sports book’s favor, but by selecting teams correctly, however, there are a few things you can do to gain some of that advantage back in your court. NCAA football is one of the sports where parlays make the most sense.
Ask yourself this, is it better to buy a computer for $500, or go to another store across the street and buy the same exact setup for $400? In this case, you can save yourself $100 just by putting in a bit of effort on your part and becoming a comparison shopper. Line shopping operates on the same principle. Why settle for betting on a team that’s money line is +200, when you can find the same exact scenario for +230? The five minutes that it takes to comparison shop online earns
you an extra $30 when your team wins.
What does this mean for parlays? It means that the more teams chosen, the more necessary it is that you are betting favorites. And accordingly, the more favorites you bet, the less money there is available for you to win.
As far as the importance of preseason football win-loss records, this factor varies from team to team. Some coaches value winning in the preseason so as to boost team morale going into the regular season. Others see the preseason only as a formality, a ritual that they must go through to get to the games that actually matter. Do not underestimate the importance of morale, though. Weaker teams will sometimes ride their wave of morale into the regular season. This inflated sense of ability usually does not last long; no matter how pumped up a weak team is, they are still a weak team.
Regular season trends are, for the most part, nonexistent in the preseason. For example, the St. Louis Rams won three (out of four) preseason games during the 2009 season, then went on to have only one win (out of sixteen) during the regular season. On the other hand, the Arizona
Cardinals went 0-4 during the 2009 preseason, and then went on to win the NFC West Division with a 10-6 record. These are two extreme examples, but the point is there: a team’s performance
during the preseason does not point to how that team will perform during the regular season. As bettors, we need to be aware of these non-trends and make sure that we are not sucked into
betting into a pattern that does not exist.
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