In toy boy Archibald's just-for-fun National Football League (NFL) pool against the spread (ATS), I correctly picked cinci +4 over LA RAMS in Super Bowl LVI.
A losing playoff season for me at 5-8 after finishing the regular season at 142-129-1 or 52% ATS : 85-78 road underdogs, 54-49-1 home underdogs, 1-1 home overdogs and 2-1 road overdogs. Including playoffs, I finished 147-137-1 = 51.75%.
I follow a strategy based on the persuasive case from Professor Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame that NFL bettors would do better if they realized that underdogs consistently best overdogs ATS and that the Super Bowl underdog is the best bet of the year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/magazine/dissecting-the-line.htmlDespite my 5-6 record picking playoff underdogs this year, I still see no evidence that most play-off matches including the Super Bowl differ from regular season matches. If bettors maintain their overdog bias, over the next 1000 years, we should see just over 1/3 of all Super Bowls won outright by underdogs and just over 1/6 won by underdogs ATS thanks to the points. Stick with underdogs.
One exception may be top-seeded home overdogs after a 1st round bye. These teams win almost 3/4 of their matches outright straight-up vs. about 2/3 straight-up victories for regular season overdogs. Despite going 0-2 this year picking the two top seeds in the 1/4 final divisional round, I still doubt that the point spreads account correctly for this probable dominance over time by the top-seeded teams in division round matches.
I finished the 2021-22 regular season tied for 24th out of 55 in Arch's pool after finishing the 2019 and 2020 regular seasons both years at 53.7% and 2nd (3-way tie for 2nd out of 60 players in 2020).
The simple all-underdogs strategy recorded a 24th winning regular season over the past 30, a track record that is significant to statheads (to borrow one of Arch's arch catch-phrases).
