Handicapping Useful Websites

If you have been around the sportsbook for any length of time, you are finding out that most people guess at this. They don’t handicap. You see them looking up at the board picking teams for their eight-team parlays. They don’t make notes and don’t have any facts or stats in their heads or written down.

TOOLS IN THE TOOLBOX

Every sport is different, and every season is different. But, we can use the same approach to handicapping one sport to handicap another sport. The teams are different and the weather is different and the venues are different, but we can still apply the same approach, just tailor it a bit to the sport.

Prior to the start of any season, you must get up-to-date information on the sport you are interested in handicapping and betting. I am mostly a college guy and find the following publications tremendously helpful, especially to familiarize myself with the teams prior to the start of the season:

PHIL STEELE’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL PREVIEW

Steele provides a write up of each conference and each team within the conference. He ranks the teams within the conference, predicting how each team will finish. The Preview provides valuable information concerning how teams did in the recent past and forecasts how the team will fare this season. This information can be tremendously valuable when handicapping season win totals or what teams will win their conferences or divisions within their conference. Steele does not provide direct betting or line information, as the Preview is published two months or so prior to the start of the season. But much valuable information can be gleaned without having to be supplemented by numerous other publications. This publication is available in hard copy and digital download format.

BLUE RIBBON COLLEGE BASKETBALL YEARBOOK

Did you know there are currently 352 Division 1 college basketball teams? I did. So does Blue Ribbon. This compendium is similar to the Steele Preview of college football discussed above. It is a must have. Do not even think about starting the college basketball season without this book. The Yearbook provides tremendous insight into every team, schedule information, coaching information and detailed write-ups on each program and the coaches and players in the program. The Yearbook also ranks the predicted order of finish for teams within each conference and provides some forecasting information relative to the make-up of the team and how the team is expected to play. This publication is available in hard copy and digital download format. If purchasing the hard copy, do yourself a favor and get the spiral-bound copy. It is much easier to use than the hardbound copy!

Go to any bookstore and find something you like. Frankly, when it comes to professional sports, I don’t find a lot of value in the publications forecasting how professional teams will play and have no recommendations regarding publications – just being honest. When it comes to handicapping professional sports, I find the statistical information and power ratings information much more helpful.

The Internet is constantly evolving and information and websites that exist today, may not be around next year. However, there are a couple of stalwarts out there, which are discussed below (these can all be found on the Sports Betting page.)

FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS

This site has, probably the best information I have found, to date, for NFL and college football. I navigate to the Statistics tab and go from there. The S&P+ stats are becoming the go-to stat for many websites and blog post writers when discussing Power Ratings. When using Football Outsiders, always be sure to have the most up to date stats, which are shown with the date displayed in the upper left of this page. Be sure to choose the current year for current year stats.

For NFL, take your pick. If you have an angle you want to research regarding NFL teams and how they perform in just about any metric, this site probably contains that information. There is so much information here that it would be meaningless for me to tell you how to use it. You come up with the angle or situation and you can probably find the statistics on this site to research your hypothesis.

For College Football, I find the most useful stats to be the Overall S&P+ ratings. The S&P+ (Rating) column can be utilized to make score predictions for the week’s upcoming games. I use this as my Number One set of Power Ratings.

SAGARIN

Jeff Sagarin has been compiling his Power Ratings for years. Since 1985, Sagarin has provided them to USA Today for publication in the newspaper. I haven’t seen a USA Today in a long time, so I don’t know if his lines are still being published. Regardless, Sagarin Ratings are quite powerful and useful. I find Sagarin Ratings often mimic the actual betting lines found in most sportsbooks. When I find a discrepancy between the Sagarin Rating and the betting line, it tells me to dig deeper in my analyses to find out why. This can often be an excellent indicator of value. Also, Sagarin computes the Schedule Rank (displayed as SCHEDL RANK), which is the Strength of Schedule for each team. Strength of Schedule should always be considered in your handicapping as it gives an indication of how relatively easy or difficult a team’s competition has been, to date.

KENPOM

Kenneth Pomeroy (KenPom) is a meteorologist. He also happens to be a college basketball nut (like us!). He started compiling statistics for fun and putting them up on the web. Some intelligent basketball handicappers found his stats and were able to blow away the Oddsmaker’s best lines. Alas, everyone now knows about KenPom and the stats compiled by the site. It is still tremendously useful and my absolute go-to site for getting started with my day’s college basketball handicapping. For best results, buy an annual subscription to the site as you will get a tremendous amount of data for a very small fee.

ACTION NETWORK

These guys are kind of new to the scene, but they are wise in the ways of sports. Action Network covers just about everything you can bet on, and some things you can’t, but they offer valuable insight into upcoming sporting contests. To get the most out of the site, pay the small annual subscription fee.

So, that should get you started on the path of research and handicapping using statistics that are actually meaningful. Don’t pay much attention to the talking heads on the television and radio, as much of that is mere opinion. If you hear something that sounds wrong or “off” you can probably find the correct information in the stats you follow and know how to research.