With Week 0 rapidly approaching and the early-August lull in the sports calendar, it’s a great time for college football fans and bettors to start getting their prep work in for the 2025 season.
Some of that is getting familiar with the trends once again; 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 over/under data from Covers and BetMGM and the most profitable teams to hit the over and under since 2022 and in 2024.
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, especially in college football where there is so much roster turnover year over year. 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.
Here, we wanted to explore the teams that have been the most profitable on point totals in recent years. Being a great over team doesn’t necessarily require an explosive offense, while a great under team doesn’t have to have a shutdown defense. All that matters is that you over-perform your projections on either side consistently. That bears out in the data, as there are teams you may expect (USC and Indiana in overs, Iowa and Iowa State in unders), but there are some surprises in there as well that show how reputations impact odds.
Best over teams in college football
*Missouri State is new to the FBS for 2025 but has played three FBS opponents since 2022 and the total has gone over in all three.
It comes as little surprise that USC sits on top of this list, as Lincoln Riley arrived in 2022 and the Trojans have scored a lot and given up a lot of points since he took over — although, last year, the market caught up to the Trojans as they went 6-6 on totals. Indiana is tied with USC, thanks in part to Curt Cignetti’s debut season in 2024 in which the Hoosiers went 9-3 to the over. BYU, New Mexico and Utah State all also went 9-3 to the over last season, boosting their positions on this list.
Other teams that had strong over seasons in 2024 but don’t crack the 60% threshold for the past three years include:
Best under teams in college football
Easily my favorite part of this list is that Iowa is still hovering around 60% to the under for the last three years despite going over in nine (9!) games last season. That wasn’t because Iowa’s offense somehow became an unstoppable juggernaut, but it’s a perfect example of sportsbooks overcorrecting so hard to getting killed by Iowa unders for the past two seasons that they routinely put Iowa totals in the 30s last year. That, coupled with a step forward from the Hawkeyes offense after scrapping the Brian Ferentz playbook from 1952, made Iowa a hysterically consistent over team. And yet, they were 6-19-0 to the under the two previous years to make them still profitable to under bettors long term.
The team that would surprise most non-bettors on this list is Ole Miss, but they went 10-2 to the under last year. Lane Kiffin’s squad may have a reputation for piling up points, but last year they were a particularly nasty defensive team. The Rebels were routinely given totals that were overly respectful of their offensive firepower and disrespectful of their defensive might. The result was Ole Miss being the best under team in the country — alongside Houston, who was a dominant over team the last two years before an Iowa-like overcorrection last year from books.
We’ll see this fall if Ole Miss totals dip back down after their performance a year ago (and with a new quarterback under center), while Iowa has some optimism at quarterback as well and might command a return to totals in the 40s in 2025.
Other strong under teams from 2024 who didn’t cross the 58% threshold for the past three years include:
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