College Football Betting: Do New Rules in 2023 Mean We Should Bet the Under?

Anyone else sweating yet? The return of college football brought back the joy that football fans everywhere feel. A Saturday filled with multiple televisions, some good food and drinks and hopefully a few winning bet slips. But this year's Week 0 introduction to the college football season also brought some new rules.

Starting this season, the clock doesn't stop after a first down in a college football game. It will take recreational watchers some getting used to, but it will also cause bettors to adjust when handicapping point totals for each game. The games themselves end faster, but does that mean each team will have less chances to score?

We take a closer look in advance of Week 1 in the hopes to help bettors make the right call. There's hundreds of great CFB games over Labor Day Weekend, and our college football best bets hub can often be the guide to a winning week. Don't miss out!

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Last Week's Results

With only a handful of games on last week's slate, we don't advise rushing to any vast conclusions from such a small sample size. Early into the slate on Saturday, it appeared that Unders were having their moment - but was that due to the new rules or was it due to the Navy offense being the Navy offense?

In total, we had seven games in Week 0, and four of the seven went Under. The best offenses that were in action were still able to find the end zone early and often, as USC and Notre Dame led the way with 56 and 42 points respectively in blowouts. But lesser-talented teams still had good offensive days - including UMass (41) and Vanderbilt (35). While the new rules may have played a small factor, the early results aren't enough to make us rush to the sportsbook and hammer the Unders across the board.

MORE: College Football Prop Bets Week 1

But There May Be Some Value in Week 1

While we won't draw any sweeping conclusions after Week 0, we still can find value on one side of the Over/Unders for Week 1. At the time of writing, there are 24 college football games that qualify as "Best Bets" according to our model. 14 of them have identified an edge on betting the Under, meaning 58% of our Best Bets that involve point totals for Week 1 are playing the Under.

It becomes even more substantial if you isolate the highest edge bets. In the Best Bets hub, you can sort by "edge", filtering the bets with the highest difference between our model's projections and the sportsbook odds. Of the top 15 highest-edge college football Total bets for Week 1, 11 of them are Unders, meaning that 73% of those high-edge bets lean to low-scoring games.

So What's The Takeaway?

There may be value in identifying Unders at a higher rate than Overs early in the season, but only in the right spots. If you take the approach of betting every single Under on the board, you aren't likely to make a profit, and ultimately the sportsbooks will adjust (possibly even over-adust) to the new rules.

With that said, a good bettor uses all the tools at his or her disposal, and that's why we are here to help. By using college football betting tools such as Quick Picks, Best Prop Bets, Futures and our reviews of the Best US Sportsbooks, you can identify market inconsistencies and bet the highest edges.

For Week 1, there's plenty of value to find on the Unders, if you are looking in the right spots.

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