Winning Strategies for Wagering on National Football League Games

Abstract

An attempt was made to develop profitable strategies for betting on National Football League games. The research was based on the hypothesis that biases exist in the setting of pointspeads and that these biases can be detected and used for profitable wagering. An analysis of 1969–1974 data suggests that biases of several types do exist and that they are of sufficient magnitude to allow profitable betting strategies despite the normal five percent betting fee.