by Kyle Hunter
Tuesday, Dec 23, 2025We are getting into the thick of bowl season. Let’s take a look at five last minute tips for betting these bowl games. In this article, I’m talking about the smaller bowl games and not the College Football Playoffs.
- Understand that betting the bowl season is absolutely nothing like betting during the regular season. If you are using the same process to bet these games as the week to week regular season games, you are asking for trouble. It’s a completely different type of game and should be treated as such.
- Never Assume Too Much- Do not place your wager “assuming” that certain players will or won’t play. This is the time of the year to dig and look for information as hard as possible. Many key players won’t play. There will be plenty of players who just play for a short time and then sit out the rest of the game. There are teams who “should” be excited for a bowl game, but for one reason or another are not.
- Motivation is everything and figuring out who is or isn’t motivated is your ultimate goal especially when placing a wager on a side in bowl season. There is no flashing light telling you who will be motivated and who will not. At times, the press conferences and quotes from the players before the games will say a lot. Live bettors can use motivation to their advantage too. Often you can tell in the first couple series of a game whether a certain team is motivated to win a football game. There are live bettors who are extremely successful by just focusing closely on effort levels in the early going of these games.
- Keep an eye on the first half unders- Many of these games so far this season have started out very low scoring. In fact, the first half under is 7-3 on these smaller bowl seasons contests. Fans in general could tell you too that these games have been very sloppy for the most part. There are a lot of guys playing that haven’t played in key spots like this throughout the season. It seems to be leading to more of a feeling out process than what we usually see.
- Keep The Volume Lower- I recommend betting fewer games than normal. There are a lot of moving parts in these bowl games. You don’t have to have action on all these games. Only look to bet the games where you feel you have some kind of edge. There are plenty of games through the season, so there will be a lot of opportunities!
