Everyone Falls for the Top 25. History Shows Half of Them Don’t Even Belong – and the Spread Knows It
The Illusion of the AP Top 25
We get it. We’re just not buying into it.
That’s the AP Top 25 College Football rankings for the preseason.
We get why the pollsters do it. It gives content, endless content, to the sites and shows that break down NCAA football 24/7 between January and the end of August. It’s marketing for the league itself, that top-of-mind thing.
It gives us all something to talk about. Who moved where? Which teams could surprise?
But preseason polls drive public bets, not actual on-field performance. That’s because no one has taken a real snap yet.
No freshman QB has stepped into a stadium with 100,000 opposing fans. No coach has been able to see his starting 22 in real game action.
Back in the day, these polls didn’t carry as much weight. People took a wait and see approach, and just bet on their favorite teams in Week 1 and relied on a couple of hunches.
Now, thanks to wall-to-wall coverage, social media, and let’s face it, big money, the noise is deafening.
So we’re here to quiet it down a little.
Check out the latest odds at Lucky Rebel
Betting Against the Rankings
If a team isn’t in the preseason AP Top 25, are they even real?
That’s the media talking. And that’s why sharps get in early and feast. More on that in a bit.
Unranked teams regularly cover the spread early in the season. This happens because of a couple of factors:
- Line inflation. Sportsbooks are not immune to public perception, and often feed into the machine. This means the unranked teams are facing a larger spread. Makes it easier to cover for the ‘dog, but the casual bettors can only see the big names and shiny objects. It makes them believe a 35-point spread somehow makes sense.
- Ch-ch-changes. Bowie was right. Turn and face the strain. In NCAA football, that means the strain of roster changes, coaching changes, and a new team coming together in a short time. Common sense says this should close the gap between unranked vs ranked teams. The ranked teams, no matter how much talent they have, still have some kinks to iron out in the first real game of the college football season.
Underdog status. You don’t think that a smaller market team looks at the 20, 30, 40+ point spreads against them and use it as motivation? Bulletin board material, they call it.
Especially heading into Week 1, where they’ve heard the news about their ranked opponent for weeks or months now. They’ve also had all that time to study film, get prepped. Classic David vs. Goliath stuff.
The Spread Feeds the Hype and Vice Versa
The true spread players at Lucky Rebel know that the books often feed into the hype and buy into it at the same time.
This breeds public overconfidence. Top 25 teams walk in with a new hot-shot recruit at QB, and suddenly realize it’s going to take him a few weeks to find his rhythm. Too late though. It’s late in the 4th quarter and he has no chance of covering.
Bottom line? There’s no substance yet. Sure, top teams will do well most likely over the season. Talent is talent. But in the preseason? It pays to be skeptical.
Historical Letdowns
Florida State was ranked #10 in the preseason AP Top 25 last year.
They lost their first 3 games, all against unranked squads. Their Week 1 game? They were favored by 10.5 points and the moneyline was a massive -455. They ended up losing to Georgia Tech by 3 points.
More hype examples? The #3-ranked Oregon Ducks were 49.5-point favorites heading into Week 1 against Idaho last season. The Ducks managed to stay afloat, but they only won by 10 points.
That’s a 7-TD hype spread that should have been a red flag for bettors.
You know it was red meat for sharps.
Sharp Strategy
NCAA Football more than holds its own when compared to the NFL for hype.
Now with NIL and the transfer portal, the spin and bluster machines are in overdrive.
Sharps will see a multiple touchdown spread between a Top 25 team and an unranked team and get excited. (Well, as excited as sharps can get. They’re a pretty stoic bunch).
The data backs up their excitement though. Since 2013, road favorites have covered just 40% of the time, compared to 54% when they kick off the season at home.
In the last five seasons, the ranked road teams do win outright about 80% of the games against the unranked teams, but they cover the spread barely half the time. Sharps see this and know that the Sportsbooks are also shading the lines to give the appearance of a bigger spread than the true spread.
Contrarian bets, like going with the underdog against large Week 1 NCAA football spreads, can be a solid play.
Rank ≠ Value
It’s tempting to go with the narrative after months of talk about some powerhouse ranked teams. Human nature.
And they may well be there, fighting for the national championship, in five months.
But the Top 25 teams are still just a best guess before the NCAA football season starts. And the unranked teams have been going hard in the offseason too, so their own rankings may be way too low.
Just last season, 5 teams that were in the Top 25 for Week 1 were not even ranked by Week 4.
And we don’t suggest that you need to pick which teams will fall out in a few weeks. You just need to know that Week 1 has some prime targets that won’t cover.
Inflated NCAA lines and exaggerated media storylines make betting against the rankings a viable college football Week 1 betting strategy.