How To Read College Football Betting Lines

The 2023 college football season is just around the corner and if you’re looking to bet on the upcoming campaign, SportsLens have all bases covered when it comes to understanding betting lines.

How To Read College Football Betting Lines

The regular season kicks off next Saturday with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish up against the Navy Midshipmen, followed by an additional nine Week 0 fixtures to look forward to.

There are many different aspects of college football betting lines to consider, such as point spread, moneyline and over/under.

For example, let’s take the odds from Notre Dame vs Navy and explain the different lines.

For the moneyline, whichever team wins outright pays off. To take Notre Dame, who are favored, a bettor would wager $1300 to win $100. On the other hand when taking the underdog, which in this case is Navy, $100 is bet to win $800.

For the point spread, one team is listed in the negative and the other in the positive. The team in the negative with a minus sign is favored and so the bookies take points away from them, meaning they must win by at least a certain number of points to cover that spread.

In this case, Notre Dame must win by at least 21 points to cover the spread. On the flip side, the underdog has a plus sign and will cover the spread if they either win the game outright or lose by less than the posted number – in this case, 20 points.

Sometimes the spread is listed as a whole number, which is used to prevent ties. For example, if the spread was set at 20 instead of 20.5 and Notre Dame win by 20, that’s called a push. As a result of this, all bets are off and money wagered is returned.

Total points is pretty self explanatory, if at least 51 points are scored the over wins – and if less than 50 are scored, the under wins. The total can also be a whole number which may result in a push where all bets are returned.