2021 Bowl Betting: Three Trends and Angles to Consider

We break down some bowl betting trends and angles, including looking at line movement, cold-weather games, and regular-season ATS.

December 16, 2021 - by Jason Lisk

Here are three bowl betting angles and trends to consider as you look through this year’s bowl schedule.

• Big Line Moves
• Cold-Weather Bowl Games Are for the Dogs (and Overs)
• Great ATS Teams, Poor ATS Teams

To see more college football trends, check out our College Football ATS Records & Trends page.

If you want our betting predictions, subscribe so you can see our College Football Spread Predictions, Over/Under Predictions, and Moneyline Predictions.

Big Line Moves

Should you follow big line moves in bowl games? There’s some logic to it, as bowl performance is influenced by player participation, coaching moves, suspensions, and more.

Some of these factors should be reflected in line movement after opening.

Let’s take a look at the last decade. In games where the line moved at least two points between the opening number and seven days before kickoff, you get the following if you bet on the team in the direction of the line moves:

• Sample size: 80 games
• If you had already bet the opening line: 62.5% ATS
• If you bet the number seven days out: 56.2% ATS
• If you bet the closing number: 54.4% ATS

Here’s where we put the standard caveat of low sample size, and that’s especially true when we look at even larger line moves.

But even if you were somewhat late on the line jumps, you would have covered at over 56 percent while jumping on lines a week out from kickoff. Even waiting on the closing number and betting into it has been profitable.

There’s at least some possibility that these big line moves are a result of information on things like suspensions, which players are sitting out, and QB changes. If anything, the market underestimates the impact of some of these things.

2021 Games That Apply So Far

If you want to see the most up-to-date info on betting line moves, we have that info on each bowl matchup page.

Here are teams that have seen at least two points of line movement in their favor compared to the opener so far:

• Western Michigan (+6.5 to -6)
• Michigan State (+3.5 to -1)
• Tennessee (-1 to -4.5)
• Maryland (+2.5 to -1)
• Kansas State (+2.5 to -1)
• Kentucky (+1 to -2.5)
• Virginia (+1.5 to -2)
• Memphis (-4.5 to -7.5)
• Iowa State (+1.5 to -1.5)
• UTEP (+13.5 to +11)
• Baylor (+1.5 to -1)
• Louisville (+1 to -1.5)
• West Virginia (+5.5 to +3.5)
• Tulsa (-7.5 to -9.5)

The biggest movement has come in the Western Michigan-Nevada game. Nevada QB Carson Strong confirmed yesterday he is entering the NFL draft and skipping the bowl game.

Cold-Weather Bowl Games Are for the Dogs (and Overs)

Traditionally, college bowl games were played in warmer-weather venues (compared to the rest of the country in winter). With the expansion of bowl games, though, we have seen a greater variety of locations start to host games. There is now a bowl game in Boise, Idaho, and in New York City, for example.

Using data from Weather Spark, we pulled the average daily high temperature on Jan. 1st in each of the bowl host cities. (Bowl games played in a dome were denoted as such as well). Then, we compared the spread and over/under results since 2008 based on the typical climate in the host cities in bowl season.

Bowl Performance of Favorites and Over/Unders Based on Host City Average Temperature

TEMPERATURE	W	L	WIN PCT	ATS W	ATS L	ATS T	ATS PCT	O	U	N	OVER PCT
50 degrees and under	42	30	0.583	30	41	1	0.424	46	26	0	0.639
51 to 60 degrees	89	37	0.706	65	58	3	0.528	61	61	4	0.500
61 to 70 degrees	47	28	0.627	35	40	0	0.467	29	46	0	0.387
71 degrees and above	63	38	0.624	54	46	1	0.540	47	53	1	0.470
Dome Games	55	37	0.598	43	47	2	0.478	43	48	1	0.473
OVERALL	296	170	0.635	227	232	7	0.495	226	234	6	0.491

The cold-weather venues—those with an average Jan. 1st daily high of 50 degrees or lower—have resulted in more underdog covers and point totals going over the number compared to other bowl games.

Underdogs have covered in 57.6 percent of the bowl games since 2008 at a colder venue. The point total has gone over in 63.9 percent of such games.

The coldest venues currently hosting a bowl game are:

• Boise, Idaho (Famous Idaho Potato Bowl), 36 degrees
• Boston, Massachusetts (Fenway Bowl), 38 degrees
• Bronx, New York (Pinstripe Bowl), 41 degrees
• Annapolis, Maryland (Military Bowl), 45 degrees
• Albuquerque, New Mexico (New Mexico Bowl), 47 degrees
• Nashville, Tennessee (Music City Bowl), 49 degrees
• Memphis, Tennessee (Liberty Bowl), 50 degrees

Of the four bowl games with the highest over rate since 2008, three of them are on the above list. (The other is the New Orleans Bowl.)

In games played at average temperatures above 60 degrees, meanwhile, the games have gone under the total 55.2 percent of the time since 2008. That includes every outdoor game played in Florida, Arizona, and Southern California, as well as the Hawaii and Bahamas Bowl.

2021 Games That Apply

Here are the current underdogs in the coldest-weather venues:

• Kent State (+3)
• SMU (+2) – though Virginia opened as the underdog before line moves
• Virginia Tech (+1) – though Maryland opened as the underdog before line moves
• East Carolina (+3)
• UTEP (+11.5)
• Purdue (+4.5)
• Texas Tech (+8,5)

You can see all of the over/unders for these bowl games on our Over/Under Predictions page.

Great ATS Teams, Poor ATS Teams

We have a full list of the ATS records of every bowl team in 2021-22. But what does that information mean?

Should you go out and follow teams that have been hot covering the spread? Should you fade the poor performers?

Great ATS Teams in the Regular Season

For our purposes, we’ll define a great ATS team as covering at least 75 percent of its regular-season games. On average, there have been about seven bowl teams per year meeting that criteria.

Going back to 2011, Great ATS Teams went 28-40-1 (41.8%) ATS in their bowl game.

So, the evidence that you should be following teams who performed well in the regular season against the spread is not particularly strong. If anything, these teams have underperformed expectations.

Poor ATS Teams in the Regular Season

Most teams that have a poor ATS record during the regular season don’t make a bowl game, so we’ll expand our definition of a poor ATS team to 33 percent or lower cover rate in the regular season.

Going back to 2011, Poor ATS Teams went 28-31-1 (47.5%) ATS in their bowl game.

The results here are more mixed, but there’s been no strong trend that teams that enter the bowls with a worse ATS record either perform well or continue to underperform as a group.

2021 Games That Apply

Here are the 2021 bowl teams with an ATS cover rate of 75 percent or more in the regular season:

• Michigan (11-2 ATS)
• Pittsburgh (10-3 ATS)
• Old Dominion (9-3 ATS)
• North Texas (9-3 ATS)
• Notre Dame (9-3 ATS)*
• Oklahoma State (9-3-1 ATS)*

*Notre Dame and Oklahoma State face each other in the Fiesta Bowl.