Sports Betting 101: Understanding Totals

NCAA football betting players will see some outlandish totals in the first week of the college football season, and that’s because you’ll usually get a lot of top-25 teams who pay D-II schools to come in and basically help them run a glorified practice.  But what are totals and what are they all about?

Totals, or over/unders as you’ll hear them referred to, is simply the amount of points both teams will score during the run of a game.  Totals are one of the toughest things to gauge, and most people think that it’s less difficult to wager on totals than the spread, but they’re wrong.  Imagine your team is up 49-3 with a minute left, and the total is 53.  Your team is likely going to run the clock out, which leaves you one point less than the over/under.  If you bet on the over, you’re going to lose.  It can all come down to a late field goal, or a last-minute interception, and it can all go downhill in garbage time, where points can be put up like mad, or both second units are too inept to score points.

Totals are a fun thing to bet on for people who really don’t care about the outcome of the game, but they want to spice it up a bit.  Chances are, if you see someone crying over a late missed field goal that had no effect on the final score, they’ve probably bet on the totals in their best online sportsbook.