Football Flexibility

Now that the 2005 football season is finally under way and you've gotten a chance to observe many teams, it's the perfect time to establish a mindset that will serve you well for the rest of the season. One of the key pieces of that winning mindset should be to remain flexible in your opinion of the teams at all times.


One of the worst approaches you can have at the start of the season is to be "locked in" as far as your opinion of the teams is concerned. Realize that the preparation you did in studying the teams prior to the start of regular-season play was just that: preparation. It was a starting point, a point of departure. Inevitably, by doing your preseason "homework," you will have formed opinions about many teams. But now that the season is under way, you have to be ready to alter those opinions, and to do so in rapid fashion if you expect to stay at least even with the oddsmaker.



In the past decade or so in sports betting, at least three universal truths have become apparent when it comes to football. First, teams change faster from year to year, month to month, and even week to week than ever before. More freshmen and other newcomers see early action in college football than ever before. In the pros, salary cap restrictions, the increase in free-agent signings, and huge contracts for high draft choices have resulted in wide variances in many teams' performances from year to year (for example, just look at what happened to Baltimore and Tampa Bay the season after they won the Super Bowl). Second, there is more information available than ever before: more websites than you can check out, more football-related TV shows than you can watch, more football articles in newspapers and magazines than you can read, and more televised games than you can stand to view. Third, oddsmakers are more informed and faster to act than ever before, with 24/7 Internet wagering available on a virtual global basis. The bottom line? If you're not quick to learn and adapt early in the season, you run the great risk of being left behind – and quickly.



A couple of the worst things you can do in the early going is to be locked in to team technical trends that worked beautifully last year. When the character or inherent nature of a team has changed for the better, you must be prepared to take advantage immediately. When a team is changing for the worse, you must be ready to jettison any technical trends that might have been very formful in the past.



Another mistake is to put too much emphasis for too long on your preseason calculation of the number of returning starters for college teams. In the first place, those numbers are always a bit arbitrary. In the second place, early injuries, suspensions, and ineligibilities can wreak havoc with your nice, tidy charts of returnees. You must adjust those totals as the season goes along if they're going to have any continuing validity.



Another early-season bad habit of many sports bettors is to "fall in love" with teams because of some runaway early-season victories. Remember, it's whom a team beats and where it beats 'em that is generally the true indicator of how good a team is, not how much it wins by. Many nonconference games these days involve teams with big class differences – for example, Ball State at Iowa and Western Michigan at Virginia – in the first week of the season. Plus, there are many nonconference games that are not even on the line, such as Indiana State at Texas Tech. Coaches of the power teams tend to use those games for their own purposes; for example, to give young players more experience, to give eager alumni a big, easy win to brag about, or to rest some key players and provide extra practice time for a tougher opponent on the horizon. Once again, don't be fooled by eye-opening point totals that are run up against badly outclassed opposition. Many times, huge wins posted against badly outclassed opposition are merely an indication that a coach is mean, not that his team is great.


Bear in mind that big scores, even against outclassed foes, generally portend pointspread inflation in the winning team's pointspread in its next game. Two blowouts in a row usually means double inflation. The media and the general sports-betting public love big scores, and the oddsmakers know it. They're eager to take advantage of the fact that sports bettors love the big winners and will pay higher and higher "prices" to bet on them. Even if you "ride" such a team early in the season to several wins, don't make the mistake of riding the same team back down the ladder once the opposition becomes tougher.



Lastly, keep in mind that stubbornness is one of the worst traits of a sports bettor; flexibility is one of the best. I can't tell you how many times I've asked someone why he continues to bet on a team that is obviously heading downhill and he's told me, "That team has been so good to me in the past. I know they're going to turn it around." In fact, there are no guarantees that it will. Most teams win (or cover) when they are, literally, good and ready to do so, and not before. Yes, there are always the rare, fortuitous covers by some bad teams when their opponent is unfocused or commits an inordinate number of turnovers. But in sports betting, there is nothing better than a formful team, at a good pointspread, against a "cooperative" foe. If you're flexible and adaptable enough in the next few weeks to uncover those teams each week for 2005, you're very likely to enjoy a successful season.

Chuck Sippl is the senior editor of The Gold Sheet, the first word in sports handicapping for 49 years. The amazingly compact weekly Gold Sheet features analysis of every football and basketball game, exclusive insider reports, widely followed Power Ratings, and a Special Ticker of key injuries and team chemistry. If you haven't seen The Gold Sheet and would like to peruse a complimentary copy, just call The Gold Sheet at (800) 798-GOLD (4653), and be sure to mention you read about it in Card Player. You can look up The Gold Sheet on the web at www.goldsheet.com.