College Football: Home Dogs and Betting Against the Public (2003-2005)
Sports Insights is pleased to present this year’s update on the College Football marketplace. In this article, we look at how college football dogs — and home dogs — fared over the recent past. We also updated our charts to show how Betting Against the Public can be used to improve “Home Dog” performance. The information on this site is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Use of this information in violation of any federal, state, or local laws is prohibited.
College Football Dogs and Home Dogs
In the NFL, the 2005 season was a huge year for the favorites. How did 2005 treat college football dogs? And what about home dogs? Table 1 shows the results over the past several years. We purposely show results over individual years to highlight how performance can jump around — even over entire seasons.
Table 1 – College Football Dogs and Home Dogs
| Period | Dogs | Home Dogs |
| 1998-2005 | 50.3% | 52.3% |
| 2001 | 52.4% | 49.3% |
| 2002 | 50.2% | 50.0% |
| 2003 | 48.3% | 51.4% |
| 2004 | 52.1% | 60.2% |
| 2005 | 51.4% | 50.7% |
| Last 3 Years (2003-2005) | 50.7% | 54.0% |
Here are some key “takeaways” from the chart:
- The results continue to validate previous academic research — that there is a bias towards underdogs, and in particular, home dogs.
- The results show that although there is a bias, the sports marketplace is relatively efficient, so that the vig is difficult to overcome.
- Notice how performance can fluctuate.
- In this article, we highlighted all 2003-2005 periods in yellow to make comparison more convenient amongst the various approaches and tables.
Home Dogs Getting Points
Table 2 shows the performance of Home Dogs receiving a given amount of points. 2005 was a mediocre year for this strategy — particularly when the dogs were receiving 7 points or more.
Table 2: College Football Home Dogs Receiving X Points
| Period | 0.5 or More Pts | 3 or More | 7 or More | 14 or More |
| 2003-2005 | 54.0% | 53.2% | 53.4% | 51.8% |
| 2003 | 51.4% | 52.7% | 52.8% | 51.0% |
| 2004 | 60.2% | 58.0% | 61.2% | 57.4% |
| 2005 | 50.7% | 49.1% | 45.9% | 46.2% |
Betting Against the Public — on Home Dogs
Last year, we saw that combining “Betting Against the Public” with betting on “Home Dogs” — was a profitable betting strategy. We updated this information to include the 2005 season and present the results in Table 2’s format for comparison purposes.
Table 3: College Football Home Dogs and Betting Against the Public (30% Level)
| Period | 0.5 or More Pts | 3 or More | 7 or More | 14 or More |
| 2003-2005 | 56.9% | 55.0% | 54.9% | 54.5% |
| 2003 | 60.0% | 58.7% | 58.5% | 53.1% |
| 2004 | 60.6% | 58.8% | 59.3% | 56.8% |
| 2005 | 51.0% | 48.3% | 47.6% | 53.1% |
For the purposes of this chart, we selected games where the Public was 30% or lower on the Home Dog. Note how Betting Against the Public consistently adds value over Table 2 (Home Dogs, as a standalone system). Indeed, our series of articles has show that Betting Against the Public can add value to just about any handicapping approach. We hope that you will use Sports Insights’s numerous sports investing tools and data to improve your handicapping. Good luck in the 2006-2007 College Football Season!
Disclaimer
We do not guarantee that the trends and biases we’ve found will continue to exist. It is impossible to predict the future. Any serious academic research in the field of “market efficiencies” recognizes that inefficiencies may disappear over time. Once inefficiencies are discovered, it is only a matter of time before the market corrects itself.