Fall is fast approaching, and as the leaves begin their annual color change, college football coaches from coast to coast are preparing their teams for the battles to come. The NCAA football season kicked off a few weeks ago, and with it, bettors got their first taste of gambling on the gridiron.
Whether you’re a die-hard fan who wagers religiously on their alma mater, a sharp who squeezes out a living backing the best bets only, or a recreational bettor who simply enjoys having a little skin in the game – college football offers hundreds of teams and dozens of games to choose from each and every Saturday.
And thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent repeal of a federal ban on sports betting, states like Delaware, New Jersey, Mississippi, and West Virginia have even joined Nevada in operating regulated sportsbooks over the last few months. Between these fully legal sportsbooks found in racetracks and casinos, the abundance of offshore sports betting websites, and the old-fashioned underground bookies, college football fans won’t lack for options throughout the 2018 season.
But while many folks out there will focus on the players – the can’t miss NFL prospects, Heisman Trophy candidates, and redshirts going from the bench to the big game – bettors in the know are hard at work studying head coaches.Football fans know that the NFL is a player’s league, with a franchise’s hopes of winning the Super Bowl largely contingent on a star quarterback coupled with a stout defense.
Take the Pittsburgh Steelers, for example, a team which rode gunslinging QB Ben Roethlisberger to a title under head coach Bill Cowher in 2005. Three years later, with Cowher long since retired, the Roethlisberger carried the team and second-year head coach Mike Tomlin to a second Super Bowl victory. In the college game, however, coaches are the crucial factor in determining long-term success for a “program.”
Nick Saban led the 13-1 LSU Tigers to a share of the National Championship in 2003, but after a brief dalliance with the NFL, he returned to college football as head coach of Alabama midway through the 2007 season. That year, the Crimson Tide stumbled to a 7-6 record, but in 2008 – Saban’s first full year at the helm – Alabama righted the ship to go 12-2. One year later, Saban achieved perfection at 14-0, winning the first of five National Championships (2011, 2012, 2015, 2017) during his ongoing dynasty down south.
Urban Meyer achieved the same feat in Florida, leading the Gators to a pair of National Championships in 2006 and 2008, only to depart for the greener pastures of Ohio State in 2012. By 2014, Meyer’s magic had worked wonders once again, as the Buckeye’s claimed their first National Championship in more than a decade. Simply put, sustained success in college football hinges almost entirely on the head coach.
In an era when standout talent tends to leave school early for a spot in the NFL Draft, counting on seasoned seniors to coalesce and keep a team in contention is a fool’s errand. As you’ll learn more about a little later on, turnover rates in NCAA football are notoriously high, and coaches like Saban and Meyer seldom have the same core players to rely on from year to year.
For bettors, this knowledge can become the key to unlocking increased profitability. Rather than wagering on unknown quantities fresh out of high school, or the rich history of a few football-crazy schools, you should be targeting the best head coaches with your sportsbook bankroll.
To that end, be sure to consult the following guide to why coaching is so important for NCAA football bettors. You’ll find a wealth of useful information on how bookmakers adjust their odds based on head coaching acumen, historical data showing which coaches succeed and fail when scored against the spread (ATS), and a deeper dive into the player turnover rates that can turn champions into also-rans, and back again, within only a few years’ time.
The importance a head coach’s impact on a college football team can often be hard to quantify, but given the current scandal rocking Meyer and his staff at Ohio State, bettors do have a few concrete data points to work with.
In case you weren’t aware, Meyer was suspended for the first three games of the regular season due to his handling of domestic abuse allegations made against one of his assistants. When it became clear that Meyer had lied to reporters about his prior knowledge of the alleged incidents, the Buckeyes brass elected to put Meyer on the shelf for 25 percent of the team’s regular season slate.
The suspension was nothing more than window dressing, with the #4 ranked Buckeyes scheduled to take on lightweights Oregon State and Rutgers to begin the year. The only game of note affected by Meyer’s absence will be Ohio State’s third of the year take on #15 TCU on a neutral field.
But while we don’t yet know how that game will turn out, we can look back on Weeks 1 and 2 to gauge exactly how sportsbooks assess the value of high-profile head coaches like Meyer.
Before the suspension was announced, the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook – the world’s largest sportsbook and an industry leader in terms of establishing initial lines – installed Ohio State as huge 39-point home favorites. But when they heard Meyer wouldn’t be stalking the Buckeye sidelines, the Westgate SuperBook – along with the South Point casino sportsbook and other Sin City sports betting hotspots – immediately adjusted their line to Ohio State (-35.5).
That’s a 3.5-point difference, more than a field goal worth of value, ascribed solely to Meyer’s head coaching abilities. In the end, that adjustment wound up mattering very little, with Ohio State demolishing Oregon State by a 77-31 margin.
Despite the actual score though, Meyer’s suspension and the subsequent shuffling by sportsbooks illustrates the importance of head coaching for college football bettors. The Westgate SuperBook also slid Ohio State down from (-110) to (+125) odds on winning the Big 10 Conference, while moving rivals Michigan and Penn State up in kind.
And over at the Wynn Las Vegas sportsbook, Meyer’s absence compelled oddsmakers to push Ohio State win total down from 10.5 to 10. All things considered, sportsbook operators know full well how head coaching impacts the prospects of a college squad.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Westgate SuperBook manager John Murray offered the following insight into how his bet shop adjusted to the Meyer suspension:
“I consider Meyer one of the best coaches in the country.I definitely think it would have an impact. But that team is absolutely loaded.
They can put one of us in there and still probably have one of the best teams in the Big Ten.”
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South Point sportsbook director Chris Andrews told the newspaper that Meyer’s leave actually brought bettors in to fire on Oregon State’s newly improved underdog odds:
“Some guys did come in and bet on Oregon State.(Meyer) might mean 1½ or two points to the power ratings. It seems small for a great coach, but you’ve got a really good staff in place.
You get a guy like Urban Meyer, it’s not a game-to-game thing where he’s so great, which he is. But it’s really just running the whole program.”
But as the sportsbook head honchos’ comments suggest – coupled with Ohio State cruising to covers in a pair of blowout victories without Meyer – the best college football coaches are tasked with creating an entire team culture. And even when suspension, injury, or family tragedy pulls them from the sidelines for a spell, these team leaders can be trusted to leave a functioning infrastructure in their place.
As a bettor, your sole objective should be cashing tickets.
Sure, sweating a crazy back and forth shootout can be great fun, but if you’re serious about beating the books at their own game, identifying the best bets on the board is the number one job.For NFL bettors, this process can often be boiled down to assessing the rosters on either side of an upcoming game.
Looking ahead to the NFL’s Week 2 schedule, we can find Drew Brees, Alvin Kamara, and the loaded New Orleans Saints hosting Tyrod Taylor and a Cleveland Browns squad that went 0-16 last year. With no outside knowledge of the coaching that goes into both teams, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the stacked Saints should be favored over the perpetually rebuilding Browns.
Roster upheaval does exist in the NFL, don’t get me wrong there, but star players and standout contributors tend to stay put thanks to four-year rookie deals and long-term contracts.
But when you shift your focus to the college game, sizing up random rosters can be quite the challenge. The more successful a program becomes, the more attention NFL talent scouts pay attention to the playmakers on the field. And when the NFL Draft arrives, you can count on the best teams sending a wide swath of their starting lineup onward to the pro ranks.Take the defending National Champions in Alabama as a prime example of college football’s roster churn.
After QB A.J. McCarron led the Tide to a second straight national title in 2012, he departed for the NFL. From there, senior Jake Coker took his turn as the title-winning signal-caller in 2015. Saban then turned to freshman QB Jalen Hurts, who took the Tide to another National Championship game in 2016. Alabama lost that one, but Hurts brought them back to the promised land last year – only to see fellow freshman Tua Tagovailoa replace him at halftime of the big game.
This year, Saban is rolling with a tandem of Hurts and Tagovailoa at QB, illustrating the flexibility great college coaches need when confronting constantly changing rosters.
And the NFL Draft doesn’t come calling for quarterbacks only. Earlier this year, NFL teams plucked 12 players directly from Saban’s roster:
That draft haul set a new record for Alabama, breaking the previous mark of 10 players heading to the NFL in 2010. All told, Saban has sent 77 of his players to the NFL during his legendary 10-year tenure with the Crimson Tide.
This phenomenon isn’t limited to Alabama by any means either, as fellow SEC powerhouse LSU has sent 72 players to the NFL over the last decade, followed by USC at 66 draftees.
When it’s all said and done, trying to handicap former high school standouts as they transition to the college game is simply too tall of a task for most bettors. Instead of focusing on the players on the field, identifying the most consistent coaches is the key to becoming a winning college football bettor.
Whereas players are only around for four years at most (barring redshirts of course), college football coaches tend to camp out at a particular campus for longer durations. As such, bettors can benefit by studying the respective histories of various head coaches as they pertain to performance against the spread (ATS).
In the college game – which includes a whopping 129 teams playing in Division 1 alone, along with hundreds more across the lower divisions – top-tier teams take on doormats with alarming regularity. It only takes one look at Ohio State’s 77-31 and 52-3 victories to start their three-game run without Meyer to make that fact eminently clear.
Because of the clear talent disparity which exists between the Alabamas and the Tulanes of the world, sportsbooks rely on inordinately large spreads to keep bettors interested. Taking a lookahead to the Week 3 slate, you’ll find Oregon as 41.5-point favorites over San Jose State, and Clemson holding a 34.5-point edge over Georgia Southern.
Enormous spreads such as these can be confusing for football bettors who favor the NFL product, where parity ensures that lines seldom stretch into the double-digits. But the best way to navigate the maze of massive spreads dotting the college football landscape is to fall in line behind the best ATS coaches.
For whatever reason, a select group of head coaches tends to excel when it comes to beating the spread. They might just be naturally aggressive on offense, running up the score in blowouts to notch “style points” with the College Football Playoff committee. Or maybe they sneak a peek at the lines, vowing to cover even huge spreads as a point of pride.
In any event, you can increase your odds of cashing tickets by Saturday’s end simply by backing coaches who are consistently successful ATS.
Check out the table* below – which uses data compiled by Action Network – to see which college football coaches have collected the most ATS victories over their careers:
*Bettor’s ROI signifies the return on investment bettors received when betting on a coach’s team; Units Won signifies the monetary return on those wagers ($100 bettors would profit $700 on a 7.0 units won, for example)
Mike Gundy of Oklahoma State tops the list with an 92-71-0 record ATS. Bettors who backed Gundy’s teams over the last 13 seasons with the Cowboys enjoyed a healthy 10.2 percent return on their investment, while earning a sweet 16.6 units of profit.
Saban also secures a spot on this list, racking up an ATS record of 81-69-0 while bringing back an ROI of 5.8 percent on 8.7 units won.
And interestingly enough, the winningest ATS coaches in college football tend to helm smaller schools, with the likes of Ohio (Frank Solich), Georgia Tech (Paul Johnson), and Louisiana Tech (Skip Holtz) rising to the occasion.
If you’re more interested in that Bettor’s ROI stat – and who wouldn’t be? – check out the table below to see the coaches sorted by the financial metric instead:
Once again, familiar faces like David Shaw of Stanford, Kirby Smart of Georgia, and Bill Snyder at Kansas State find themselves returning winning ATS tickets at a higher clip than their peers.
Using the two tables above, you should be well-equipped to target the winningest, and the most profitable, coaches as it pertains to ATS betting.
On the other hand, another part of succeeding as a sports bettor involves avoiding losses.
To help you on that front, consult the table below to find out which coaches have consistently struggled to beat point spreads over the years: Predictably, this list is dotted with lackluster coaches who tend to come and go with relative frequency, as evidenced by their records’ smaller sample sizes.
You can use this table to select teams that you wouldn’t bet on whatsoever, and this preventative approach will likely save you several lost bets over the course of a season.
Or better yet, you can scan the schedule to find out when these ATS-losing coaches are playing next, before pounding the other side with a well-timed wager.
Head coaches are the centerpiece for any successful college football program, and as a bettor, it’s your job to know which field generals to follow into the fray. By backing only the best ATS coaches, betting against the worst ATS performers, and paying close attention to roster attrition, you should be able to improve your ticket cashing rate using these simple rules of the road.
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