Betting College Football Teams Off High Scoring Games

It’s no secret that the betting public likes to play the OVER, especially on teams that they know can put up some points. That urge to back the OVER figures to be at it’s strongest after a game in which one of the teams playing lit up the scoreboard in their previous game.

I wanted to see just how this situation has played out over recent years. Are teams that scored a lot of points more likely to go OVER the total in their next game? Or is it a scenario where we see oddsmakers inflate the total and the value turns to the UNDER?

I broke down my findings below into three different sections. Individual teams off 50+ point game, individual teams off a 50+ point game prior to November and two teams off a high scoring game.

Teams After Scoring 50+ Points

This section is focused primarily on seeing how teams perform after scoring 50+ points in their previous game. While the primary focus is on the total, I included the results for both SU and ATS for the team that is coming off a high-scoring game.

Overall (since 2005)

The overall results here indicate that your initial reaction to a team scoring 50+ points in their previous game is to look towards taking the UNDER. Only 45.9% of the time have teams off a 50+ point outburst went on to go OVER the total in their next game.

Not all that surprising to see a strong SU record for these teams in their next contest. There’s not a lot of bad teams that are scoring 50+ points. As far as how these teams perform against the spread, there’s not a significant advantage either way.

Location (previous/next game)

After seeing that there’s a decent trend towards the UNDER after a team scores 50+ points, I wanted to see if I could add in a situation where it was even stronger. I decided to look at location and see if that had any kind of effect. What I did was look at the location of their 50+ point outburst (previous) and the location of their next game.

As you can see the UNDER got significantly better when a team was traveling after scoring 50+ points at home. The UNDER in this scenario has cashed in 225 out of 407 games or 56.8% of the time. One of the interesting things that I noticed when looking at location is that there was a stronger possibility of the UNDER hitting when a team was either traveling after playing at home or traveling back home after playing on the road. There’s not a significant enough edge to back teams who are either staying home or remaining on the road.

You will also see that while we were looking for a better trend for the UNDER, we noticed a strong system for the spread. Teams that scored 50+ points in their previous game on the road and are playing their next game at home, have gone a profitable 95-69-6 (57.9%) ATS.

Off a Loss

Next thing I looked at for teams off a 50+ point game is how they did if they lost their last game. Not a big enough sample size to get carried away with the results, but I figured it was worth listing. Once again the trend of changing venues seems to be a key thing to look for when it comes to backing the UNDER.

ATS Betting Line

Final factor I wanted to check was the betting line. First thing that jumped out is that the UNDER was 85-124-3 (40.7%) in games with a team that was listed as a small favorite (-1 to -7) after scoring 50 points. The UNDER also performed well when these teams were listed as an underdog, hitting just under 45.0%.

Another thing that popped up was that there was a noticeable edge in backing these teams against the spread when the line was either -7.5 to -14 or -21 or more. Both of these scenarios hit just under 56% with a large sample size.

Teams Scoring 50+ Prior to November

This next section takes a look at teams after scoring 50+ points prior to the month of November. The reason for only looking at games prior to November, is that I believed there would be a bigger overreaction earlier in the season than there would be later in the year.

Overall (since 2005)

The overall results support my theory here. UNDER has hit 55.8% in games with a team that scored 50+ points prior to November. Keep in mind that in our previous section we saw the UNDER cash at just a 54.5% clip.

Based on Total of Previous Game

Here I looked at how the results played out based on the total from the previous game. As you can see from the table above, we were able to strengthen this system. Teams who scored 50+ points in their previous game that had a total set between 50 to 59.5 points, saw the UNDER cash 58.7% of the time the following week!

Based on Total of Next Game

The next obvious thing to look at was if there was anything we could learn by separating out these games based on the total that’s been set. Once again we were able to find some positive results. The UNDER improves to 67.4% on teams after scoring 50+ points prior to November with a total set at 49.5 points or less.

Not only were we able to find a more exact time to back the under, but we also spotted a ATS angle that has done extremely well. Teams that scored 50+ points in their last game prior to November are 98-77-5 (56.0%) ATS if the total in their next game is set between 60-69.5 points.

Both Teams Off High Scoring Games

So far the focus has been primarily on one team. The last thing I wanted to take a look at is what happens when we have two teams that are coming off a high-scoring game playing each other the next week.

Overall (since 2005)

As you can see, there hasn’t been many occasions where we have two teams coming off a 50+ point game playing each other. It’s only happened 45 times since 2005. The results support backing the UNDER in games where you have two teams that scored 40+ points in their previous game, but it appears to get weaker if both teams eclipsed the 50-point mark in their last contest.

Two Teams Off 40+ Games & Total

Since we found the best results in games where both teams scored 40+ points, I wanted to take it one step further and see how the total set impacted the probability of them going under the total. While it’s a small sample size, the results show that the UNDER is 71.4% in games with a total of 49.5 or less featuring a matchup of two teams who scored 40+ points in their previous game.