The college football season is nearly upon us, and that means it’s high time for fans and bettors to start getting their prep work in for the 2025 season.
Part of that preseason work is getting reacquainted with the trends, as it’s been six months since we last got the chance to wager on college football action. Here we want to take a look at regular-season against the spread data from Covers and BetMGM and the teams that have been the most and least profitable against the spread going back to the 2022 season — and who did the best and worst last year.
Trends can be useful to understanding who tends to over or under perform based on sportsbook projections, but it can’t be treated as gospel. That’s especially in modern college football where there is so much roster turnover year over year. On top of that, part of the challenge in using trends to make future betting decisions is the sportsbooks have this information (and so much more) at their disposal as well.
If anything, the trends can help you point to a team that might be headed for a course correction from the books this coming season. Sportsbooks want the action as close to 50-50 as they can get, so a team that dominated in one area — overs, unders or against the spread — might see an adjustment the next year that you could capitalize on by zigging when others zag.
Here we wanted to highlight the best and worst teams against the spread, which doesn’t always correlate with the best and worst teams in college football, using data from BetMGM and Covers. A powerhouse program that is a perennial playoff contender might not dominate opponents quite as much as the odds project, while a team that’s not even close to bowl contention could be a competitive underdog week in and week out.
The 20 best teams against the spread since 2022
I’m always fascinated by popular teams that still manage to over perform against the spread. Notre Dame is a legacy program that gets tons of action, and most college football fans would tell you the Irish are perennially overrated. However, over the past three years, they’ve been quite profitable to bet on under Marcus Freeman, with last year being a standout performance both on the field and at the sportsbook.
Oregon and Penn State saw the books catch up a bit this past season, as they went 6-6 ATS, and as two of the leading Big Ten contenders coming into 2025, we’ll have to see if they can live up to what will undoubtedly be lofty expectations from fans and sportsbooks this season. On the flip side, Arizona State jumped into the top 20 thanks to their shocking run to the Big 12 title last year. The Sun Devils won’t be sneaking up on anyone this year, and we’ll see if they come back to earth some as an ATS juggernaut.
Duke’s strong debut season under Manny Diaz was a profitable enterprise for anyone that got in early on the Blue Devils, but they’ve been plugging away as a great ATS team since 2022. UNLV’s resurgence has made them a great ATS team, which is no small task when you play in the oddsmakers backyard in Vegas.
Other interesting inclusions on the best ATS list are UConn and New Mexico State, who have both gone from laughingstocks of the college football landscape to competitive programs in recent years. Tulane and Ohio are among the most consistent Group of Five programs against the spread, while Mizzou takes advantage of some disrespect in the SEC on a seemingly annual basis to be a profitable team to back.
The 20 worst teams against the spread since 2022
The list of the worst against the spread teams over the last three years features a lot of teams you’d expect. This list has an awful lot of overlap with teams that have made coaching changes or have coaches on the hot seat coming into 2025.
There are plenty of teams where their ATS record and on the field record mimic each other — Kent State, Stanford and Purdue have been woeful both on the field and for bettors recently — but there are some playoff contenders that also don’t live up to expectation from the oddsmakers and bettors. Georgia’s presence may surprise some, but those that bet on the Dawgs would know Kirby Smart’s teams may win a lot but rarely in recent years do they cover.
Other teams on this list have been victims of offseason hype trains driving up expectations. Texas A&M seemingly finds themselves in that position every year, as the results on the field haven’t matched up to the talent coming into College Station. Then there’s Miami (FL), which hasn’t dug its way out of a hole from Mario Cristobal’s first year in 2022, when fans wanted an immediate turnaround and were greeted with a 2-10 record against the spread.
On the other end of the spectrum, Vanderbilt’s stunning competence last year nearly got themselves off of this list, as they’re the only squad that made the bottom 20 ATS with a winning record at the book last year. This year we’ll see if any of these teams will pull themselves out of the hole, or if the misery will continue for fans and backers of these squads.
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