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NCAAF Consensus

The NCAAF Consensus helps you understand where the public money is going. Once you know where bettors are placing their bets you can then decide to trust the consensus spread or bet against it.

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Currently, no consensus data available for NCAAF.
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What is the NCAAF Public Consensus?

The public consensus in NCAA football betting is simply the wager favored by the majority of bettors (typically expressed as “percentage of bets”), providing insight into how the general betting public feels about a given contest.

How Can NCAAF Consensus Affect Your Betting Decision?

The public consensus offers any bettor a glimpse of how wagers are breaking down in a sportsbook. If a lot of bets come in on a certain team, the public consensus can even influence the point spread, leading online betting sites to adjust it a point one way or another depending on who the money favors.

For less experienced bettors, public consensus can act as a road map to help people determine what the most popular bet might be on any given contest. But anyone undertaking bets made with the public consensus need to do so with the understanding that the public at large isn’t comprised of betting experts, leading to lots of bets based on favoritism or name recognition. That money can swing the consensus in a direction that might not be the smartest bet.

More on that in a minute. Initially, though, a bettor’s first decision will be to go with or against the public consensus, a choice that often depends on the matchup. The consensus betting tool at Bookies.com provides the most up-to-date information on where that public money is going. The consensus might be more helpful in games that don’t include the big-name teams that draw lots of casual bettors. Savvy bettors, on the other hand, learn when to trust the consensus in their wagering decisions, and when to go against the tide, which is a practice known as “fading” and is common among “sharp” bettors. More infomation on this and other strategic aspects of college football betting is available in our football betting guide.

Should I Bet with or Against the Public?

In college football, the elite power programs attract the most attention — from blue-chip recruits, from television networks, from national media, and from the betting public at large. Bettors who wager with little to no knowledge of the sport’s subtleties are more attracted to a brand name like an Alabama or Oklahoma, simply because they’re more familiar with them, and all that public money can often influence how sportsbooks set the lines.

Of course,in a sport like college football where the majority of the time a handful of programs dominate the rest, public oney isn't everything. Clemson -11 in the College Football Playoff semifinals after the 2018 season was a consensus-based choice that made sense, and proved accurate after the Tigers thumped Notre Dame.

But not all spreads are that large, and many require some nuance to navigate, and the public — hello, Alabama -6 over Clemson in the 2019 national title game — isn’t always right.

The Mindset of a Sharp

Savvy bettors known as “sharps” go not with the herd, but with betting trends; sometimes they point toward the consensus, and other times they don’t. Sharp bettors study a team’s recent performances against the spread and against the total, information that’s easily available on betting websites. Some sharps develop their own betting guidelines and systems that they stick to regardless of what the masses do.

Sharps occasionally make a move known as “fading the public,” which means betting against the consensus — like taking Clemson over the favored Crimson Tide in the 2019 title game. It’s a tactic that requires some judiciousness; you don’t want to do it all the time, but it can pay off if the research and homework appear to run counter to line moves influenced by college football consensus betting.

Common Fades

Sharp bettors are also aware that some programs are simply overvalued, benefitting from NCAAF odds or lines that are inflated because of masses wagering out of sheer favoritism or popularity.The classic case here is Notre Dame, which is beloved by millions of fans, remains a popular NCAA football consensus bet, but has a poor recent track record against elite programs.

Similarly, high-scoring teams such as Oklahoma or Washington State can bedazzle casual bettors with their offenses, only to be exposed when they run up against more complete opponents. Sharps know to dig beyond the obvious, and that there’s always more than meets the eye.

And that digging can sometimes pay off. The further you venture from the game’s highest level, the less lines are impacted by NCAA football consensus betting; amateurs aren’t exactly delving into more obscure matchups like Georgia State against South Alabama, or New Mexico versus San Jose State, or even lower-level power conference games like Vanderbilt against Arkansas.

But savvy bettors can find real gems by diverting from the herd and diving deeper into the pool of games on offer, and unearthing those matchups where the line or the total looks like a mistake. In sports betting, there’s no bigger thrill.

That said, it’s still fun to bet on the big games — be they early season kickoff classics, conference championships, or playoff showdowns — and share in some of the wonderful communal craziness that college football has to offer.

I’ve Taken Note of the NCAAF Consensus. What Happens Now?

Once you’ve examined your options and done your research on the consensus betting tool at Bookies.com, then comes the fun part: making the bet. In college football, each game typically offers at least three main options: a bet against the point spread, a bet on the moneyline, and a bet on whether the combined final score will go over or under a set total.

Decide which way you want to go and compare the odds for that bet at all the licensed, regulated sportsbooks you see at Bookies.com. Then if you are in a state where sports betting is legal, click the link (make sure to add the promo code for your bonus offer if you are a first-timer to that sportsbook), place your wager and enjoy the game – and hope to collect when it’s over.