College Football Betting: Exercise Proper Money Management!
By Loot, NCAA Football Handicapper, Lootmeister.com
Veterans of college football betting know that being able to handicap games is only part of the equation for success. If you are not disciplined to a money management plan, you can be a whiz against the spread and it won’t matter. A person who constantly strays from his plan is playing a dangerous game. The college football bettors who have been around for a while might do a lot of things very differently. One thing they all have in common, however, is that they all adhere to a disciplined money management plan.
When you read advice pertaining to the topic of money management, you will generally see the 5-10% rule. That standard dictates that you never gamble more than 5-10% of your total betting bankroll. That’s certainly not bad advice. What it does is allow you to be able to absorb losing Saturdays without your bankroll becoming decimated. It gives you enough room to withstand the inevitable swings of betting fate that come with the territory.
But it’s difficult to dictate a hard rule when people’s circumstances can vary so greatly. People have very different situations in their lives where the 5-10% rule might not work. If you are a responsible family man, the 10% rule should apply. But what about the younger guys without people to support? Or the college kid whose betting bankroll is also known as his total bankroll?
A person with bills and kids to support has a lot to lose. Putting aside a pre-determined amount of money to bet that does not in any way jeopardize his life and betting no more than 10% of that every Saturday keeps him in line. But what about a college kid who wants to give himself a shot to handicap some games? He doesn’t have a bunch of money. Telling him to never bet more than 5-10% of his bankroll on a given Saturday is the same as telling him to forget about betting altogether.
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People need to decide what is best for them. As long as it’s done within a responsible framework, who’s really to say how much you should bet? What about some single guy who has no people to support? Maybe he has $200 and he wants to bet. Well, he will need to hit the ground running. But betting only $20 every Saturday on college football is sort of blah. He will need to bet lights-out to even make a bit of progress. Slow progression is the way to go–make no mistake. It’s just a challenge when working with such minimal numbers.
At the same time, you need to protect yourself if you’re serious about betting on college football. If a big chunk of your money is on the line every Saturday, you’re never more than a bad day away from almost total ruin. It’s important to be able to absorb a bad Saturday. It’s ridiculous to take an extreme stand in week 5 where a bad run of picks will put you on tilt.
It comes down to discipline. You need to plan your bets and STICK TO IT. It takes a special breed of cat to have a losing Saturday and keep his composure and just try again the next week. The urge will be to recoup losses. And that’s when people run into trouble. A bunch of guys who can pick against the spread at a good percentage end up being losers by not heeding this advice.
A guy who is otherwise a solid handicapper might, for example, bet $700 on college football. After a rough Saturday, he might only have $250 of that $700 left. Then he dips into his pocket and bets $400 on a late game in an effort to regroup. He loses that. Then he starts increasing the amount of his NFL bets to try to get back. And now he’s on the same slippery slope that has ruined a bunch of bettors.
This is marathon, not a sprint. You can’t put yourself in a position where having one bad Saturday puts you behind the 8-ball for the rest of the season. It’s only one week. Becoming a great or bad handicapper is proven over the course of years. Many of these bettors have big losing Saturdays. But they survive and thrive. And it’s precisely because they never put themselves in a spot where one week can possibly break them.
