Sportsbooks Smile Wide Following Week 1 of College Football

For sportsbooks online and in Las Vegas Week 1 of the college football regular season went as planned, as underdogs right and left started covering in the most bet games over the weekend.

Bettors who bet straight up with the dogs ended the weekend well, but most bettors are parlay players at the recreational level that thrive on favorites and the teams that are top ranked. Those are the games and teams that sportsbooks won big on for the first weekend of the regular season.

Tennessee not covering began the week on Thursday on the right foot for books followed on Friday by Army winning their game outright.

The Alabama’s rout of USC did not help the books, but most of the books were able to recoup those losses when Clemson could not cover its game against Auburn.

Tennessee was 20-point chalk at home against Appalachian State, but needed overtime before pulling out a 20-13 win.

Then Temple, a big favorite who was returning all their skill position players from their team that went 10-4 last season, were worked over by Army to the tune of 28-13. The Black Knights won just 2 games all of last season.

Sharp bettors took Army since the line was first released last July.

Through the games on Friday, the favorites were 4-8 ATS while the UNDER was an amazing 11-1. The public bettor loves the favorite and the OVER, which helped books tremendously going into games on Saturday given the cushion they had build up Thursday and Friday.

On Saturday, Oklahoma the then No. 3 ranked team was upset outright by Houston 33-23. The books were given another boost when LSU the then No. 5 ranked team was beaten outright as well by Wisconsin 16-14.

Thanks to Clemson deciding not to kick a late field goal to extend its lead to 9 points, the Tigers won by just 6 and did not cover as 8-point favorites. On that game, over 85% of the tickets as well as 81% of the money was bet on the Tigers.

When the week came to an end, favorites on the biggest bet games were 17-21-1 against the spread while the UNDER dominated at 28-11, which spells success for the sportsbooks.