Is Flipping a Coin a Viable Betting Strategy Throughout the NFL Season?

Back by popular demand…and you know who you are!  The degenerate gambler is back for another season to determine if a flip of a coin over the course of a full football season can actually make you money!

For all you newcomers, the above chart is full of information which you may not be aware of.  Let me break it down for you.

Lets start with the first column.  This shows who the favorite in the game.  The favorite only matters when betting against the spread which I’ll explain later.

Column 2 is the spread.  The spread is a number picked by experts through a number of different variables such as injuries, weather, home team and the like.  They’re basically predicting that the favorite will win by that amount of points.  For instance, if the Patriots are favored by 6.5 points, then they need to win by 7 points in order to win when you’re gambling against the spread.  Make sense?

In column 3 we have the underdog.  The underdog is not expected to win and technically, the underdog can lose the game, yet still win the bet.  Look at the same scenario as above.  Houston is an underdog by 6.5 points.  Meaning, if you’re betting against the spread, you add 6.5 points to Houston’s point total.  So they could lose the game by say Pats 17, Texans 14, but you would add the 6.5 points to Houston’s total and Houston wins the game against the spread 20.5 – 17.  How are we doing so far?

You will note that in each row, one team is capitalized.  This is the home team.

Now in column 4 you’ll see “Coin – Outright.”  When we flip the coin, a flip of heads = home team and a flip of tails means the away team.  So when we flipped the coin for the Philly/Atlanta game, we got a flip of tails, so Atlanta gets the nod as the road team.

Column 5 is “Coin – ATS.”  ATS is short for against the spread.  We had a separate flip for who to choose against the spread.  For example in the Patriots/Texans game the coin chose New England to win outright, but it chose Houston as against the spread.  What can I say, the coin has a mind of it’s own.

I’m thinking we’ll put a price of a $10 bet on each game throughout the year and we’ll keep tabs at the end of the week whether or not we’re up or down.  At the end of the season we’ll see if it would have been worthwhile to put real money down.

So that’s about all I’ve got.  I’ll check back in on Tuesday with the results for the week and we’ll track the progress throughout the season.  I’ll put a new post up every Wednesday or Thursday, so keep on checking the blog.

Oh, and feel free to post your picks if you want to go head to head with the coin.