Buy Low and Sell High When Betting The NFL

There is little doubt in order to show a profit when sports handicapping or horse race handicapping it helps to think in the same terms as a contrarian investor. Contrarians are often talked about on wall street as investors who look to buy stocks that everyone hates or short sell stocks people are in love with. By not following the crowd contrarians often out perform the overall market. They love to invest when there is absolute panic and fear gripping the market. Such fear and irrational exuberance in the sports world plays a big role in the odds when betting on sports. You can see this a lot in the NFL with a full week for the press to either crown a new team Superbowl champs after a huge win or declare a team dead and out of the playoffs based solely on their last performance.

You might want to take notes when the outcome of a NFL game truly shocks the pundits. You know the type of win where its all you hear about the next week. I’m not talking about a 14 point favorite covering by 28 thats not really news. Your looking for teams who have  been labelled average beating teams that are the media darling. These teams that won will often be over bet the next week, you are in a sense buying at their high. Conversely if you are betting a good solid team that performed badly recently you will be buying at the low.

One example of buying low was when the Eagles played on Thanksgiving day. The previous two games the Eagles had underperformed badly in 2 road games (winning on the road in the NFL is never easy), they had tied the lowly Bengals and gotten blown out by the Baltimore Ravens. A game in which McNabb was pulled after not being able to get the offense going against a tough Raven defense. Promptly after that game the Eagles were declared dead, panic was high. Some had McNabb not starting on Thanksgiving, worse others had him being run out of town. All this over a team with a 5-5 record, the time was right to buy low as specially for a nationally televised home game on Thanksgiving. The result was a easy 48-20 win over the Cardinals.

An example of selling high appeared in my blog on Nov 30th’s Denver@NY Jets game. After the Jets were the toast of the NFL beating the Titans.

When selling high you would prefer that the team you are selling or betting against be playing a team that is competitive and not in the bottom third of the league. Conversely buying low your looking for teams that still have potential, just like if your buying a stock after a recent drop you want to avoid ones that go bankrupt. You may not find a play like this every week but when you do they offer good value and its another weapon to use when handicapping.