Tips To Win Your 2024 College Football Bowl Confidence Pool
The confetti has finally fallen on nine conference champions last weekend. Now that it’s been swept away, it’s time to turn our focus to the 2024-25 College Football Bowl Season and your confidence pool. But with over 130 FBS teams and 15 weeks of action to sift through, where do you even begin? Fear not! This article is a primer to prepare you to dominate your pools, whether in the office, with friends, or nationally competitive.
Be on the lookout for my annual College Football Bowl Confidence Pool Cheat Sheet, which is coming later this week! We’ll unveil top contrarian picks and specific strategies to win your pool there. This article is focused on getting your focus in the right place and a quick explainer on how confidence pools work. We’ll also dive into strategies for the new 12-team College Football Playoff.
What Is A College Football Bowl Confidence Pool?
Bowl confidence pools are, in essence, an exciting and strategic spin on your standard pick ’em contest. First, pick the winner of each bowl game. Next, rank them 1-47 based on your confidence in the pick. Do you think Louisville is a home run pick to beat Washington? You rank it 47. Not sure what to do with the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl between NIU and Fresno State? Us, either. You rank it 1.
As games unfold, you’re awarded points for each correct pick. Losers get zero points. The player with the most points in the end wins.
There are options to play against the spread, but these articles focus on picking winners.
ESPN’s Capital One Mania is the largest and likely most well-known bowl confidence pool contest. If you’re so inclined, you can find others with cash prizes with some digging.
Tips To Win Your Bowl Confidence Pool In 2024
1. Reframe your definition of “confidence.”
The name bowl confidence is misleading and can lead to mistakes early on. While, yes, it’s a measure of how confident you are in a specific outcome, pools are a numbers game. That confidence can be manipulated by using the betting market to your advantage in multiple ways. You can also manipulate confidence points by picking strategic contrarian picks (going against the large consensus – note, this does not have to be an underdog pick!).
Randomly assigning values to your picks won’t get you far ahead of the competition without a monumental amount of luck. Remember that this is likely what the rest of your pool is doing! Bowl Season offers some of the most variance of the season. Don’t leave it to chance.
Use implied win rates from moneylines and reduce variance (a.k.a. risk) using point totals. We’ll get more into the specifics in my Cheat Sheet.
2. Pay attention to roster availability.
Yes, it can be overwhelming, and no, you don’t need to monitor every entry into the transfer portal. Is Tulane standout QB Darian Mensah playing in the Gasparilla Bowl? Are you sure? What about Bowling Green stud TE Harold Fannin Jr.? He declared for the NFL Draft, but do you know he’s not playing? Verifying needle-movers’ availability for these games is paramount to success.
Finding roster trackers – easily searchable and documented with our College Football Bowl pages–can put you far ahead of the game.
Be sure to check on coaching and coordinator changes, as well. However, these changes prove to be less predictive than significant roster absences. Don’t put too much stock into coaching changes, mainly if the roster stays primarily intact.
3. Fade teams with losing conference records.
Last bowl season, teams that finished with a losing conference record went 4-9 straight up in bowl games. Two of those wins featured Big Ten teams with losing records (Rutgers, Maryland) beating other Power Conference teams with losing records. Teams with losing conference records went 2-7 against those with .500 or better conference records.
4. Don’t get wrapped up in chronology.
An outdated bowl confidence strategy suggests piling your points early. Others say pile it on late. The fact is that there are 1,128 points to be had, no matter when they occur. Don’t order your confidence based on the date!
5. Adjust your strategy based on pool size and difficulty.
Consider your pool size and makeup before you go wild with contrarian picks. Is this an office pool with 10 casual fans who watch their team and nobody else? You can play those safer. Pick more favorites and line your confidence up with the expected win rate.
Playing in a large and competitive pool? You’ll need to take more calculated risks (note: calculated). Playing it safe in large pools won’t quickly get you ahead of the group.
Related: College Football Playoff Odds, Bets
College Football Playoff Bowl Confidence Pool Strategy
Since this is year one under the 12-team College Football Playoff, whoever successfully handles these games probably wins the confidence pool. No longer is it one dart throw (previously, the national championship was the only matchup you had to project), but seven. Four of those have half the equation given (the four teams receiving a bye), but you have three games to project both participants.
Carefully consider the unknown options and where you place them. Perhaps loading these unknowns at the top and lucking out will be fruitful. After all, someone has to win these games, and someone is going to pick them right. Chances are, those who hit on the CFP winners and assign high confidence totals to them will win large confidence pools. But those who don’t pick them exactly right and assign high totals will sink like a stone to the bottom of confidence pools.
It’s worth separating first-round playoff games from future rounds since we’re given both participants in the first-round matchups. Don’t forget to factor in home-field advantage in these games!
I’ll review my specific strategy for this year and the math behind it in the upcoming cheat sheet.
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