Ultra Sports Bet - Sports Betting

10 tips to help you pick a Super Bowl winner

by T.O. on January 27th, 2008

If you’re like most sports fans, the biggest thing on your mind this week is the Super Bowl and who is going to win it. Later on this week I will spend a bunch of time breaking down this particular matchups and coming to my conclusion. Before we get to the specifics, though, I thought I would start with the generalities. When you sit down to make your pick for the big game you will be best served by keeping at least some of these tips in mind:

1. Don’t fear the favorites - It may seem like a good idea to fade the favorite because the public likes the favorite so much. That isn’t a good idea. In the previous 41 Super Bowls the favorite has covered 24 times, and two games have been a push. That means that the favorite has covered 61.5 percent of the time. That’s pretty overwhelming.

2. Have a good reason to back the NFC - the lesser conference (for now, anyway) has won just twice in the last ten Super Bowls, and the AFC is 6-3-1 ATS in that time. Teams with a winning record in the AFC this year were an overwhelming 25-7 against the NFC.

3. Ignore injury reports - No team in their right mind would tell the truth about the health of their players at this time of year. Making your picks assuming that everyone who is active will play and contribute gives you the best chance of avoiding being burned.

4. Momentum is crap - Teams are forced to take a week off before the Super Bowl, and they are subjected to more scrutiny and distractions than is imaginable. I’m not sure I really believe in momentum in football at the best of times, but it sure isn’t a factor in this game. Make your decision based on which team is better, not which team is hotter.

5. Rushing will likely be the deciding factor - It doesn’t matter how much the teams like to pass - the game is probably going to come down to who runs better. Think about this - the team that has had the most rushing attempts has won 29 of 41 Super Bowls. If you are going to focus on just one thing, spend your time figuring out who will run more instead of which set of receivers has a bigger advantage.

6. Ignore the hype - With so much time to fill, the media finds favorite stories and pet theories every year about what will impact the outcome of the game. They are almost never right. Ignore what everyone is saying and make the decisions that make you happy.

7. Pretend Media Day never happened - Media day is a waste of time. Players are forced to be interviewed, and many will say whatever they think people will want to hear. There is a good chance that what you hear on media day is true, but there is just as good a chance that it is totally made up. Save yourself a headache and forget about the whole thing.

8. Ignore practice reports - There is a media presence at every practice in the week before Super Bowl, and you will often hear enthusiastic reports about what a team is or isn’t doing during those practices. Do you honestly believe that a team getting ready for a game this big is going to tip its hand about anything meaningful in an open practice?

9. Go with your gut - In the end, the best way to approach the game is to go with what you feel. There are a million different ways to handicap this unique game, but few are significantly more reliable than coming to a conclusion your mind can run with and going with it.

10. Just have fun with it - Trying to effectively handicap the Super Bowl is ridiculous. There are so many intangibles, so many factors that normally don’t have to be dealt with, and so much uncertainty around the quality of the line that the game would be an automatic pass if it were played any other week. Bet this game for fun and bragging rights, not to prove that you are a handicapping superstar.

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POSTED IN: NFL, Super Bowl