The Bottom Line: NFL, MLB, CFB

Here is an article written from August of 2011. Still holds strong…particularly the idea of MOMENTUM in NCAAF…

“I was asked a question that I figured I’d answer with Football Season fast approaching. The question was, do you generalize a formula for all sports you run? The answer is a big NO. They’re all different animals. MLB is perhaps the most complicated as it is a “different animal” from month to month. Let me give you a couple of very basic, and fundamental differences between the three.

You’ve hopefully come to realize that the perhaps the best place to look for value in sports betting is in games after the team lost. This holds true in just about all of them, but some more than others. The main point I want to make in this email is that MLB, NFL, and NCAAF are all momentum driven sports; however, the way you should look to capitalize varies with each:

Here’s some proof:

-In MLB: teams win 51.0% of the time after a WIN (55.0% at home and 46.6% percent on the road).
-In MLB: teams win 48.9% of the time after a LOSS (53.8% at home and 44.6% percent on the road).

Don’t get excited though about tailing teams off wins and fading losses. It is of course all covered by the house. The real question is…

Where would you have lost the most amount of money, and where the least?

Last 7 Years:

-In MLB: betting a team after a WIN would lose you -426.31 units (-203.40 at home and -222.91 on the road).
-In MLB: betting a team after a LOSS would lose you -560.02 units (-128.72 at home and -431.30 on the road).

See how a contrarian look at things will reveal an instant loophole?

======An MLB trick **
In baseball, consider the classic get-away loss situation. If a team lost every game of a series, it would be logical to say that they are wanting the win here especially at home in front of their fans. That’s not to say that it actually happens though…after all; they probably lost the first two for a reason. The away team in the last game of a series hits the road…it’s case to case, but very often a road team is thinking about their next series more than they are this game if the series is already won and done so you can pull off some nice dog wins on the home team if you’ve got any reason to believe that they’ll be 110% while the get-away team is only 90% into it. Go back and look at our action on Sunday; some of those dogs fit the bill…



In the last 7 years home teams are 537-441 (54.9%) and +48.27 units against a get away team that is 2-0 in a 3 game series. In general, home teams have a 4.45% edge over away teams in the last 7 years, but the difference between taking them any given moment, and in this get-away opponent spot is 382.09 units (you’d lose -333.82 units blindly taking home teams in the last seven years and make 48.27% betting them off of that unique previous loss situation).
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MLB Bottom Line:

Let’s look at bases one more way and then move onto the next: what happens in a matchup where the team lost their last, and the opponent won their last home and away, and vis versa:

Team just lost and Opponent just won…
-In MLB: the team wins this game 48.7% and would have lost you -484.8 units (-132.18 at home (53.5%) and -352.62 on the road (44.6%)).

Team just won and Opponent just lost…
-In MLB: the team wins this game 51.28% and would have lost you -345.89 units ( -93.39 at home (55.4%) and -252.50 on the road (46.5%)).

Again. It’s all momentum based, but you can see that home teams off of a loss vs. a fat and happy road team is where you begin to see some value! The trick to capping this is to distinguish wins and losses like I did for you today with the Mets and Padres. Now a look at NFL…

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