With college football season fast approaching, it’s time to start developing a plan of attack for 2014. With the higher payouts that betting moneyline dogs provides, a lot of bettors may forgo taking points and only betting the moneyline, but is that smart? Over the past few years, I’ve always taken the points but also bet a little bit on the moneyline. @So_Money_Sports has always been a proponent of sprinkling a little bit on the moneyline. I have seen him tweet advice of betting 85% of your bet on the spread and the remaining 15% on the ML when betting a dog in football. I want to determine if that was good or bad advice. I’m really curious what the numbers suggest vs the 85/15% split.

My initial thought was to take a look at underdogs getting 7 or fewer points. I pulled up my database and found 2,806 games since 2005 with a dog of 7 or fewer points. Of those dogs, 1,093 won straight up or 38.95% of the time. For the most part, the more points a team gets the less likely they win straight up. The chart below shows results with respect to each point:

I added in the calculation for the breakeven moneyline for each spread. Based on the numbers at the sportsbooks I monitor, you could possibly find some value but nothing to go crazy over. For example, most of the time, I’ll see +130 on dogs at +3 which would have been slightly profitable had you bet each possible game. 3.7 units over 9 years is not really a great return on investment in my opinion. If you do your homework and your winning percentages are higher than the chart above, there’s definitely money to be made.

Next, I want to look at how betting moneyline dogs does when the team covers the number. This is where it starts to get a little interesting. We need to do a little math and make a few assumptions first. I kept track of some moneylines early in the season last year, and I’ve used those in my chart below even though they aren’t perfect. The assumed moneylines can easily be changed, but I think they’re reasonable for illustration purposes. Another assumption we need to make is what winning percentage to use. I’ll use 54% to begin. For the spread/moneyline split, we’ll use So Money’s 85/15% suggestion. Lastly, I’ll assume a $100 total bet and -110 odds for the spread bet. We have 6 parts to calculate.

1. Expected win on spread bet
2. Expected loss on spread bet
3. Expected win on ML bet
4. Expected loss on ML bet
5. Expected loss on ML bet when dog doesn’t win straight up
6. Expected loss on ML bet when spread bet results in push

Your head may be spinning by now, but I’ll try to explain what’s going on above…and probably give you terrible memories of high school math and remind you why you played games on your graphing calculators. Start with the 2nd to last column “Flat bet exp win.” This value is your expected win if you just bet a flat $100 on a game taking the spread. This value is items 1. and 2. from above. You’re simply taking ($100 * 54% / 1.1) – ($100 * (1-54%)) = $3.09.  We’ll need parts 3. – 6. to come up with the final column. I’ll work through the spread of 3.5. We calculate part 3. by taking $100 *54% * 77.85% * 1.4 * 15% which gives us 8.828. Part 4. is $100 * 46% * 15% which equals 6.900. Part 5 is $100 * .54% * 22.15% * .15 which equals 1.794. Finally, part 6. is $100 * 0% * 15% which in this case equals 0 due to it being impossible to push at 3.5. We then apply 85% to steps 1. and 2. and add wins and negate losses to come up with 2.761. If for some reason I made a mistake or if my methodology is off, please let me know.

Guess what? It actually is advantageous to sprinkle some money on the moneyline like So Money has preached all these years, but I think I disagree with his 85/15% split (respectfully I might add). If we go to the extreme case of 0/100% split where we only bet on the moneyline, the chart looks like this:

Notice that you would be mathematically better off betting ONLY the moneyline on dogs under 3 points. However, in total you’re better off just betting the spread from 3-7. I will say that I have no idea what So Money’s bet history is, and he could easily justify a split based on his personal betting data. That’s why it’s important to keep track of your own betting history so you can determine where your perceived edges are and what makes sense for your personal situation. If you don’t have success picking dogs to begin with, using these charts will probably not help you all of the sudden make money. However, if you see that you generally do well picking small dogs, these charts could help increase your profits.

Will you be betting moneyline dogs less than 3 points this season?