Betting on short home favorites in NFL profitable?

[johnny1212]

StatFox

The title harkens back to Joe Piscipo who was a comedian on Saturday Night Live and he did a shtick as a local sportscaster leaving out adverbs and giving one word answers to his own questions, that can now be seen on Comedy Central from time to time. The question itself comes from in the first two weeks of the NFL regular season, were home favorites of three points right on the nose are 0-5 SU and against the spread. Of course curiosity was aroused and we wondered if this was early season phenomenon or something that has been overlooked.

As everyone who is either a football fan or sports wagering participant knows, three is the number that represents the greatest variables. Be it the number of games that the final score lands on three or the number of contests line makers set at three. Each person or organization is slightly different, but most games thought to be a “pick” would have three points attached to the home team. Decided to go back five NFL seasons figuring this would be a representative number to see what if anything there was to find. After starting the study, it was determined it was worth noting two distinct categories. The first is all home favorites of exactly three points and the other is of 2.5-points or less.

As shown in The Edge magazine, 2005 went down as the year of the favorite. In this study, this also was bore out in all games where the home team was giving three points. This past year was the only year of the five we checked were the straight up winners and spread winners were both on the winning side. In 2005 three point home faves were 23-11 and 18-12-4 against the spread. Basically what is being stated is in all games with supposedly evenly matched teams except for the home field, the visitor won just 32.3% of the time and covered 40%. Now compare that with the other four years of what is considered “normal” patterns and answer is far different. Here the home team was 61-51 giving the 3 points, which is 54.4%, a drop of 13.3%. When put this number against the spread, the results are even more dramatic. The visitor covered just 40 percent in 2005; this number now leaps to 63.7%. Here is the breakdown of three point home favorites:

2005 23-11 SU 18-12-4 ATS
2004 12-11 SU 10-11-2 ATS
2003 22-19 SU 15-22-4 ATS
2002 17-12 SU 13-13-2 ATS
2001 10-9 SU 5-11-2 ATS

Five year total - 84-62 57.5% 61-69-14 46.9% ATS

In the other half of our study we followed all teams that were favored by 2.5 or less points in there home stadiums. Two surprising conclusions came out of this. In this scenario the argument can be made the road team is actually the better team if you believe all lines being presented are accurate without any shadowing to attract money a certain way. In our findings we see out of 98 games played, home favorites of less then three points actually won a higher percentage of game then those of exactly three points. Granted the number is not significantly larger, still larger nonetheless.

3-point Home Favorites - 84-62 57.5%
2.5-points or less Home Favorites – 58-40 59.1%

The other notable aspect for gamblers is how the against the spread numbers turned out. In this case the home favorites were cooking it up pretty good at 56.1% or almost ten percent more then those favorites of three points. The bottom line to this is really quite astounding. Out of 98 games played over a five year period, 3.1% or a grand total of three contests, did the straight up winner fail to cover the spread. Obviously the 40 underdogs are going to cover the number, but 55 of 58 teams listed by less then a field goal did also. That is really amazing stuff!

The value of information is truly apparent in this study. In the first example playing for or against 3-point home favorites is not much of a wager. However, if you can unlock the keys to who will win the game when the home team is favored by less a three points, you can start capturing really money.