Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Vig is less than that. IIRC, 54-55 percent against the spread is very good. 58 and you can buy a building.

Provided you're disciplined enough to be betting the same amount.I went 3-4 one Saturday in CFB and lost money - DOH!!!If you bet the same amount you have to win I think it is 53% of the time to turn a profit.Factoring the time to handicap - it really isn't worth it

I have never bet money on sports (that I recall).

We used to have "sig bets" around here.

We used to have that remarkably goofy Vol fan too.  I imagine he has made his billions playing roulette where he had a perfect scheme.  On roulette.

The current B1G crowd here is entirely too level headed and sensible.

I did some covert research, by typing in "crunchimus maximus" into google. Here he is:


https://www.volnation.com/forum/members/devo182.65122/

Crunch would have had a stroke at 0-2 this season, and disappeared for a month, then reappeared blaming Pruitt for all their ills.

Broken record.

I've placed a handful of bets this year since IN legalized sports betting.   It's shoebox money so just for kicks. 

I'm pretty sure I've won more than I've lost the past 5-10 years, but before that............ yikes

I'm certain I'm not even

Provided you're disciplined enough to be betting the same amount.I went 3-4 one Saturday in CFB and lost money - DOH!!!If you bet the same amount you have to win I think it is 53% of the time to turn a profit.Factoring the time to handicap - it really isn't worth it

Back when I really followed CFB a lot more closely, I tracked picks for an entire season against the spread, and posted the picks publicly on my blog the day before the games.

I had a few rules:

• I would pick Purdue, Indiana, and Notre Dame games, but I didn't actually count them against my results because I couldn't analyze those games non-emotionally. So those were just for fun.
• I waited until 2 weeks into the season to start counting results, because there's too much variance with roster turnover each year to analyze teams before 2 games had been played.
• I would pick every B1G game.
• I would try to pick marquee matchups or games where I thought the line was just "off".

This worked out to probably picking about 8-9 "counted" games per week.

Across the entire season, I picked at 62.5% against the spread. I thought that was pretty stellar.

And then I did the math. If I had actually been bet $110 per game, each week I'd be risking almost $1000 out of pocket. At the end of the season, I'd have pulled down about $2000 profit. And unless it was @MarqHusker 's "shoe box money"--and $1000 a week certainly wasn't shoebox money at the time, a single bad week could decimate my bankroll. 

I could also have reduced my risk to shoebox money levels by betting smaller amounts, but that would mean my profit would be substantially lower too.


While $2000 over 3 months work would be nice extra money, it didn't seem worth the risk when you're talking about 1-2 consecutive bad weeks being VERY painful and possibly putting an end to your betting season. And reducing the risk by betting less money might help to avoid that problem, but then if your total profit is $500 or $1000 over three months, it hardly seems worth the significant amount of time and effort it takes to make good picks.

Unless I wanted to start risking enough money to make it a livelihood, I couldn't bet high enough to secure a large enough profit to stomach the risk.

That is the issue I have with betting.  I won't bet "enough" to endanger my financial well being, and if I bet less than that, it necessarily means any winnings won't help me at all.  I play a bit of blackjack (once every two years about) and might lose $100, or win $100, but unless I ENJOY the experience and environment it's a waste of time for me.

I could go up to $1000, but the same thing applies.  Even if I won $1000, it wouldn't change anything about my financial situation. If I lost a grand, I'd be bummed a bit for being stupid. 

Exactly. $1000 dollars in winnings won't change my life. $1000 in losses won't either. But the pain of feeling stupid losing $1000 is greater than the good feelings I'd get from winning $1000. 

That's why I'll also very occasionally (maybe once every 3-4 months) buy a $10 or $20 lotto ticket, even though I know the odds are so long that it's a ridiculous bet. In that case, the "loss" is not even felt. It's less than a typical round of drinks for my wife and I. But the win would be enough to completely change my financial well-being. 

And with the lotto, that makes it fun. Because until I check those numbers, I *might* be a millionaire.

(That said, the lotto calculation changes completely if you're spending $10-20 or more per week, because that will eventually add up to real money over the course of a few years.)