Best College Football Betting Sites
Best College Football Betting Sites & Sportsbooks NCAA football is a powerhouse in the sports betting industry due to its massive fan base and the size of its 11 Division 1 conferences. There are plenty of betting. One of the best pieces of betting strategy for college football is shifting your focus away from the SEC, BIG12, and other major conferences and focusing on the lesser-known conferences. Oddsmakers don’t have the time to focus on the smaller conferences where people bet far less money than the bigger conferences.
- Best College Football Betting Sites
- Best College Football Betting Sites For Free
- Best College Football Websites
- Bet On College Football Online
College football is one of the great American sporting traditions. With rich traditions, heated rivalries, and powerhouse squads across the nation, the beginning of the season marks both the beginning of fall and one of the best times of the year to gamble. With over 128 Division I programs, nearly everyone has a school to which they’re loyal, either geographically or as alumni.
Best College Football Betting Sites
What makes the collegiate game so exciting to bet is the massive slate of matchups available for wagering. This means that if you find an edge, there are tons of opportunities to exploit it. Plus, the young players are more susceptible to letting emotion fuel their performances, meaning many opportunities for upset picks for the smart handicappers.
Rank | DE Gambling Site | Sign Up Bonus | Get Started |
---|---|---|---|
#1 | Betway Sports | 100% up to €150 | |
#2 | 22bet Sports | 100% up to €122 | |
#3 | Spin Sports | 100% up to €200 | |
#4 | 10Bet Sports | 100% up to €50 | |
#5 | Guts Sports | 100% up to €50 |
If you’re as enthusiastic about betting on college football as we are, you’re going to want a legitimate online sportsbook to take your wagers. The recommendations listed above are our experts’ top college football betting sites. They earned this distinction for a variety of reasons, including the factors we’ll highlight in the next section.
Once you’ve signed up with one of the best betting sites for college football, it’s time to break down the matchups and get your picks in! In this guide, we’ll summarize the many types of wagers, the differences between the NCAA and NFL games, and some betting tips and strategies.
For more in-depth discussions about any of the concepts written about on this college football hub page, click the corresponding links that will be shared throughout this article.
They’re Safe and Secure
To gamble on the games online, you must first open an account on one of the college football betting sites and deposit money into an account. You’ll have a variety of banking methods available, but no matter which you choose, you’ll need to be able to fully trust the website with your cash and information. With so many rogue online casinos and sportsbooks out there, that can be a risky proposition for novice bettors.Luckily, if you stick with our recommended sites, you’ll never have to worry about being scammed. Our team of experts puts safety and security at the very top of our list of priorities. In fact, preventing gamblers from being ripped off is the reason this website was created. Don’t risk losing your cash on some site you found from a search engine; our team is continuously vetting online betting operations to ensure that our readers can enjoy the fun of gambling without having to worry about the legitimacy of the website they’re using.
Best Betting Odds
A good handicapper knows that even the slimmest of margins can be the difference between profit and losses at the end of the season when it comes to betting odds. So many games come down to the wire from a betting perspective, as the bookmakers are incredibly accurate when setting their college football betting lines.We only recommend the locations that offer fair, competitive odds. Also, because these sportsbooks are the top college football betting sites, they tend to attract lots of action, meaning the lines will be on the move each week. This offers lots of opportunities to fade the public and get a reasonable price if you know when and where to bet! With our many betting and strategy guides, that shouldn’t be a problem for our readers.
Wide Range of Betting Opportunities
Another quality that we look for in a college football betting site is a wide variety of games and wager types. Not only do we want access to all of the matchups on any given Saturday, but there needs to be a full range of options such as live betting, totals, futures wagers, moneylines, point spreads, and even prop bets. The more variation you have to work with, the better the chances of finding a specific niche that you’re good at predicting.Maybe you know the conference your alma mater plays in like the back of your hand. You need a college football betting site that offers those games, even for a smaller school, so that you may exploit that knowledge. The same goes for any specific wager, from first-half bets to which team will score the first field goal. The more options, the better!
Bonuses and Loyalty Awards
Best College Football Betting Sites For Free
As if having a legitimate, reliable site with a ton of betting opportunities wasn’t enough, the online sportsbooks further incentivize gaming online with valuable bonuses and rewards programs. You may have noticed on our list of recommendations that betting websites compete for your attention using sign-up and deposit bonuses. Most sites will match the cash you initially deposit, allowing you to double your bankroll before you even make a pick!If you’re consistently wagering on games throughout the year, the loyalty rewards programs sweeten the deal even more. Depending on how often you gamble and the amount you typically bet at a time, these prizes can be precious. The average bettor can expect gifts like merchandise, cash back for losses, and entry into larger raffles and contests. High rollers have been known to receive anything from vacation packages to vehicles!
Stick with What You Know
There are so many Division I college football teams that nobody could be completely up-to-date and knowledgeable about them all. Your best bet is to focus on programs with which you’re most familiar. If there’s a local school or a favorite program that you’ve been watching for years, stick to their contests or the teams within their division.
Trying to bet outside of your knowledge base is too tricky, especially in a sport like football where statistics can often only help you so much. You need to understand the systems they run, their key players, the depth of their bench, and multiple other variables.
College athletes are prone to the emotional highs and lows of the football season. A useful college football betting tip is to bet against teams coming off of a big unexpected win and squads with a smaller opponent right before playing a huge rivalry. Unlike the pros, players at the NCAA level are prone to let-down games and are often caught off guard by active underdogs.
They’re also intimidated by massive crowds on the road at times. It happens every year when two top-five teams are set to meet up, and the away squad completely folds shortly after the kickoff. There aren’t too many sporting arenas where athletes have to deal with 100,000 rabid fans, especially in their late teens and early twenties.
Best College Football Websites
Smaller Programs/Games Offer More Value
Wagering on the marquee matchups each week can be tough because the oddsmakers focus more of their attention on those games, as does the betting public. But smaller schools and conferences are often overlooked. Sure, they still set lines and accept bets, but those lines are more exploitable.
If your area of expertise happens to be one of these lesser programs, you’re in luck. That’s where you’ll find the most value in any given week. Focus on those matchups and study the schools nobody else is researching, and you should clean up this season!
Besides a few powerhouse programs like Alabama and maybe Ohio State, most college football teams have apparent weaknesses. The kids are too young, and the turnover is too high for most programs to stay consistently loaded in all facets of the game. The trick is to understand which side’s weaknesses will play the more prominent role in a given matchup.
In most cases, you’ll want to bet against the team with weaknesses at the most vital positions. A program won’t get very far with poor offensive line play or quarterbacking, for example. With so many teams running spread offenses these days, a strong secondary is also crucial to defensive performance.
Before making a wager, lay out both teams’ biggest issues and try to anticipate how they will influence each other during the contest. An All-American defensive tackle going up against an injured and depleted offense? You’ll take bets like that any day of the week!
These are just a few basic examples of college football betting tips. For a more thorough article detailing what to look for and how to approach betting on NCAA football, check out the following link.
Types of College Football Wagers
The top college football betting sites will offer many different approaches to taking action on the games. Not only are there tons of individual matchups each week, but there are numerous ways to bet on each one as well. Here are some of the common forms of sports wagering.
Moneyline betting is probably the most straightforward, in that you’re merely picking the winner of the contest. It doesn’t matter how many points they win by or what kind of game it is; you just choose the winning side. The way the odds are expressed, however, does tend to confuse novice bettors.
When betting the moneyline, you’ll see the line expressed as a three-digit number, led by either a “+” or “-”. The underdog will have a positive number such as +200, for example. This means that a $100 bet on that side would earn $200 in profit if won. The favored team will be negative, like -175. This means that you must stake $175 in order to win $100.
Point Spread Betting
Point spreads are the most frequently used form of betting on football. Rather than offering different odds as with moneyline bets, this form of wagering applies a handicap to bring both sides close to even-money. So, if a team is heavily favored, they will give up points. For example, the line will say “Alabama -31.5.”
This means that the Crimson Tide must win their game by at least 32 points to win the bet. Meanwhile, their opponent will be given those 31.5 points and only has to lose by fewer than 32 points to win the wager. This way, you can bet either team in a contest at roughly -110 odds.
Totals betting is a way to take action on a game without picking a winner at all. Instead, you’re gambling on the number of points scored in the matchup. The sportsbooks will set college football totals betting lines at a number like 72.5, for example, and bettors wager on whether the combined final score will fall “over” or “under” that number. In fact, these bets are often referred to as “over-unders.”
Proposition Betting
Prop betting is a type of sports wagering that can cover just about any aspect of the contest that’s not already included in these other methods. You may see college football betting lines on things like “which team will score first?” or “which QB will throw the first interception?” They can be on anything!
Typically, the more mainstream matchups attract the most proposition wagers. The NFL Super Bowl is the most significant prop betting event of the year, but college playoff games have their fair share as well. When gambling online at one of our college football betting sites, you’ll find that most books will accept at least a few variations of prop bets per contest. Land-based locations often only offer them for larger events.
Bet On College Football Online
Parlay betting is a way of combining two or more wagers into one bigger one with a much heftier payout. A widespread use of parlays is betting on a team to both win and go over or under the totals line. This way, you’re making a full prediction on the outcome of the contest with a more substantial payout than you’d get by taking each bet individually.
The more wagers you add to a parlay card, the larger the earnings grow. However, if only a single aspect of the card loses, the entire parlay bet is lost. Many sportsbooks will allow bettors to add up to ten picks on a single parlay, but winning those is almost as unlikely as winning the lottery. Your best bet is to stay between two and three lines per parlay.
Futures Betting
All of the best college football betting sites also offer futures betting. As the name suggests, these are odds that can be purchased on an outcome that won’t be decided until the end of the season. Before the first kickoff of the fall, you can find betting odds on which team will win the NCAA championship, for instance.
In college football, you’ll also find futures lines on the Heisman Trophy winner. Another option is to wager on conference championships. The odds for these college football betting lines will shift and change from week to week in response to whatever takes place on the field.
Consistently winning at college football betting takes more than some luck and picking winners each week. The best handicappers create systems and strategies to identify which matchups to choose and what side to take. For example, some bettors look for games with point spreads greater than 30 points and bet on the underdog every time.
Others base their strategy on the weather forecast. They’ll look for games with 13 MPH winds or higher and hammer the under. This way, rather than searching through a vast slate of games and trying to deduce which side to take, they’re seeking specific scenarios and betting those based on historical numbers and data.
Our experts are always writing gambling guides that cover betting systems and strategies for our readers to use when betting on college football. If you’re interested in learning more about how these systematic approaches to wagering work, click on either of the following links.
Betting the College Playoffs and Bowl Games
Bowl games occur at the end of the college football season. The major bowl games still host some of the top teams in the country, while the majority of them are merely one-off contests scheduled to bring in tourism and money to a local stadium.
The biggest bowl games are the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Peach Bowl. Each year, two of these locations will host bowl games that count for the college football playoff and thus have championship implications. The others invite schools from the major conferences. For example, whenever the Rose Bowl isn’t a playoff event, it’s contested by the Pac-12 and the Big 10 champions.
Betting on these matchups can be a bit different than regular-season showdowns. They’re frequently played between squads without much experience against each other and thus may require additional research to handicap. To read more about the differences of betting on bowl games, follow this link.
The Playoffs
The top four programs in the country at the end of the season are invited to compete in the college football playoffs. Of the six major bowl games, two become the host of a single-elimination semi-finals showdown to determine which schools advance to the championship game.
These contests involve the very best squads in the nation, which makes handicapping the games a bit closer to betting an NFL game. For the top college football betting sites to gamble on the playoffs, check out the link below.
The final game of the year is for all the marbles. The college football championship game is played by the two squads who survive the playoffs. It’s a massive event for sports bettors and attracts a ton of betting action. This includes a broader variety of prop bets than usual. For the best betting sites for the college football title game, follow this link.
Sports Betting Basics
If you’re new to sports betting, you still have a bit to learn before diving into the college football scene. First, you should take some time to learn the basic concepts that will be essential to your long-term success. If you learn the fundamentals now, you’ll be much better off in the long run.
Before the college football season begins, you should have a general idea of how much you want to wager and how often. Put aside an amount of money that you can afford to lose without causing any significant disruption to your life or finances. Then decide how frequently you wish to gamble and divide the bankroll so that it will cover all of those contests.
Once you’ve created your bankroll, stick to it and avoid dipping back into your personal funds before you intended. For more in-depth explanations regarding bankroll management and how to create a staking plan, check out our articles on the topic.
Shop for the Best Lines
While all of the top college football betting sites that we recommend will be offering fair, industry-standard betting odds, you shouldn’t stop there. It’s worth signing up with more than one online sportsbook so that you may shop for the best lines for each individual game. While they’ll always be relatively similar, even getting a half point here and a few percentage points there will add up quickly to make a drastic difference in your bottom line.
One of the most significant lessons you can learn about sports betting is to learn about finding value. Many people approach betting on sporting events under the impression that it’s all about picking winners. This is false. Victorious bettors convert the odds to a percentage, which is called “implied probability.”
They then long-term the game and set a probability that each team has of winning. If the likelihood of a side earning a victory is higher than the implied probability suggests, that wager holds value. If you’d like to dig deeper into the concept of value as it applies to sports betting, check out our detailed guide on the subject.
Best NCAA Football Betting? Check all this out! Pretty sure you already know that the NFL dominates the action for major sporting events. However, there are those that feel that college football is much more exciting. The teams play harder and the players are more personally invested in the outcome of each game.
Also worth your attention is that the spreads are usually easier to beat at the best NCAA Football Sportsbooks.
Whether you want to bet the favorites or the underdogs, if you know your way around the odds you’ll have a better chance at coming out ahead on your bets.
Moving on, first we’ll talk about the best sites to place your wagers, followed by the different types of wagers you are able to place! So let’s talk about the Best NCAA Football Betting sites!
The Top 3 Best NCAA Football Betting Sites – 2019 Update
We’re talking College Football here, but this is what you’ll see immediately landing at Bovada.
Bovada is probably your best bet, (pun intended) for any underdog bets. You will find the best odds here most of the time. If you mostly bet on the favorite, you may find better odds over at BookMaker or BetOnline. We’ll talk more about the 2 of them in a moment.
The customer service is absolutely excellent at Bovada and their reputation is by far among the best. They are our number 1 pick for a college football destination and is highly recommended for bettors in the US.
If you do go to BetOnline, don’t forget to use that BOL1000 promo code! See more below!
BetOnline had fallen out of our toplist for a very short time but have absolutely moved right back toward the top! They now have some awesome deposit methods Including crypto, they currently have 17 different ways for you to deposit! The speed of payouts has increased greatly and they offer some of the best Live Betting you’ll find!
This new reputation has been holding strong for literal years now. Combine all of that with the fact that they have a very high credit card acceptance rate and you really cannot go wrong with them.
As an added bonus, if you were to go and join BetOnline right now and use the promo code “BOL1000”, you can grab yourself a 50% deposit bonus up to $1000 for use with the sportsbook!
Once again, we’re talking College Football here, but this is what you see when first arriving at BookMaker.
Of the places on our list here, BookMaker is the most established, longest running sportsbook.
They are among the best when betting the favorite, offering in-game bets and a reputation second to none.
If you happen to use bitcoin, you’ll find some of the quickest turnaround time with your money.
These guys here are currently offering a 100% Cash Match bonus. Get on it!
So, Which Sportsbook Should You Use?
That answer is going to depend on what types of wagers you want to place. For example, one site that we discovered has the best lines for betting the underdog, (Bovada>, but when it comes time to bet the favorites, we use another site. Why? It offers better lines on them.
As always, you can check out this link to get some more detailed information on each of the sites listed above as well as other sportsbooks we use regularly.
Parlays and teasers? Yup. We know where to go for the best variety.
Live NCAA football betting? Uh-huh. We know which book has the goods.
Proposition bets? Yeah. We’ve got that one covered for you, too.
We don’t want to keep them a secret, hell, we want everyone to know, so we’ll reveal the top college football betting sites that we’re using below. If there is a single site that outshines the others in every other area, we haven’t found it. And we’ve been looking for years!
Let’s jump on in!
Best Sportsbook for Betting the Underdog? Bovada
Remember this guy? If you say “yes”, ha ha. You’re old. Oh, wait…
You are bound to see the name Bovada pop up in just about any discussion about where to place bets on college football. Not only does the site do just about everything right, but it’s also one of the more popular sportsbooks out there anyway.
When it comes to offering the best underdog odds, no one does it any better!
Now, you may be wondering why one would want to bet on the underdog in NCAA football. To be honest, it’s a great way to make money! In fact, many longtime bettors spend the majority of their time identifying the ranked teams that are listed as underdogs. In the world of college football, those teams tend to cover the spread or win a surprising percentage of the time. Betting on them will give you a better-than-even chance.
This is actually pretty simple to do. Let’s take a look at the hypothetical matchup here.
Notre Dame +12
Army -12
Both Notre Dame and Army are Division 1 teams. But taking a closer look you will notice that Notre Dame, (which has traditionally been a strong contender) is listed as the underdog. If your personal betting system involves backing the ranked dogs, you would bet on the Fighting Irish.
Personally, we have found Bovada to be the best college football sportsbook for betting the underdog. The odds at Bovada are almost always better than those we’ve seen at other books and why would you want to pay more for the same wager?
Best Sportsbook for Playing the Favorite? BetOnline
Bovada is not the place to play the faves. That honor goes to BetOnline.
Now, to be fair, 5Dimes does deserve an honorable mention here. It does go without saying that 5Dimes isn’t the best place for betting on underdogs since it excels on the favorites. You cannot do both.
Betting on the favorites is a tough one. Everyone is expecting them to win, so most of the action tends to pile up behind them. The odds makers will shift the spread toward the underdogs as the bets come in to make sure the dogs get at least some of the action. The key thing to remember is that the favorite not only has to win the game, but must do so by the spread for a bet to pay out.
This means that the odds are stacked against you before the game even starts.
Technically, if you know where you break even point is, it should not matter whether you are backing the dog or not. In other words, if you are an expert handicapper on NCAA football, you’ll be fine, but if you’re not familiar with your break evens, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle.
Now, they are the favorite, so you may want to back them anyway! You’ve locked onto a game for which you’re absolutely certain the favorite will trounce the underdog. In that case, definitely place your bet at BetOnline.
Why?
Because you will get the best price. You’ll remember from earlier that Bovada offers the best price for the underdogs, well, BetOnline offers the best prices on the favorites. And as before, why pay more than you have to for the same bet?
We recommend trying out Live Betting. Could be a total game changer!
Best Live College Football Betting? Bovada or BetOnline
If you still haven’t dipped your toes into live NCAA football betting, you’re missing out! It’s a lot more exciting than just betting the spread before the game starts and sitting back to watch things unfold. You’re able to place wagers during the game!
Think about what that means.
The lines for a game will shift as the game progresses. That will give you the chance to make informed, split second wager based on up-to-the-minute events. For example, did the favorite just score a touchdown in the first quarter, closing the spread? Did the underdog’s star quarterback just get sacked and injured and taken out of the game? These are things that could have a huge impact and influence on the games final outcome.
You can expect the line to move each time something big happens. With live betting you have a chance to take advantage of that. Your attention to what could end up being even the smallest details could end up paying big!
There are several college football sportsbooks that host live betting platforms. Bovada is the one we use. Some of the other books treat live betting in the same way you might treat a strange bump on your body. They’re hesitant, maybe even reluctant, to address it.
Bovada takes the opposite approach. Not only do they offer live NCAA football betting, but they also seem to make it a priority. Lastly, you can find a lot of lines available at prices that none of the other books can touch.
Best NCAA Sportsbook for Teasers or Parlays? Bovada
The best college football betting site we have found for placing teasers and parlays is Bovada. The odds are among the best you’ll find, for these types of bets. In case you are unfamiliar with them, they’re very simple to understand.
Teasers and parlays are wagers that are placed on the outcomes of multiple games. In order to win a bet, every team you pick must win. The biggest advantage of this is that you will score a major payout if you predict the games correctly. On the other hand, the downside of this is that it’s very hard to accomplish. Picking a single winner is hard enough as it is, but 3, 4, maybe even 10 winners? It’s much tougher than it sounds considering that you do lose if even one of your picks was wrong!
So, are parlays and teasers smart bets? No, not really. The giant payouts may make your eyes bulge like you would think of betting “eight, the hard way” when playing craps. Sure, this hard eight pays 9 to 1, but the odds of landing it are 10 to 1.
But, with all of that said, these teasers and parlays are incredibly fun bets to place. When you win, oh man, you win big. When you lose, you lose comparatively little. That’s kind of hard to ignore.
Note that if you are going to place these bets, you may as well take advantage of the best odds available. Once again, 5Dimes does deserve an honorable mention here. It doesn’t hurt that 5Dimes also offers the most lines.
The Best Sportsbook for US NCAA Football Bettors? Bovada or BetOnline
Remember when online sports betting was relatively simple? Credit card in hand was just about all you needed to fund your account at your favorite sportsbook and start placing some bets within the hour. Who knew that some of us in the US would look back on those times with nostalgia?
Betting on college football, or any sporting event for the matter, online is more difficult today for US bettors. Laws that make no sense have scared off a lot of sportsbooks that once welcomed football bettors living in the US.
The good news is that many of the best NCAA football betting sites have stuck it out over the years. They continue to accept wagers from US bettors. In our experience, Bovada is the best of the lot. The site is easy to use, easy to work with and manages to clean a majority of deposits (not a small task if you live in the US!) along with offering some of the best odds we have come across.
While Bovada is hard to beat, both 5Dimes and BookMaker get some mentions here. They’ll both also come a lot closer than others.
Best College Football Prop Betting? Bovada
One of the most popular wagers you’ll find in NCAA football betting is the proposition, or “prop” bet. A prop bet rarely has anything to do with which team wins or loses a game. It’s a side bet. You instead bet on something that could happen during the course of a game or on something that might happen in or around the season.
For example, in a matchup between Illinois and Northwestern, will Illinois score the first field goal? In a Rice-Tulsa game, will the Tulsa QB run a TD during the first half? Who will be the MVP of the year? Random stuff.
Notice how none of the above wagers have a direct influence on the outcome of a game? That doesn’t make the betting action any less exciting. A lot of avid football bettors, especially those who know their stats, love placing prop bets.
Bovada is the place to go for proposition bets. That’s where you’ll find the greatest variety.
If you’re looking for the top NCAA football betting sites, we highly recommend starting with Bovada and 5Dimes. It should be obvious by now that they’re the sites we favor. We’ve learned that we never need to apologize for recommending them to folks. Both are reliable, responsive, and easy to use.
That said, we encourage you to test drive them for yourself. It’s the only way you’ll know whether you enjoy using them.
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