The Lines Monitor — College Football Lines

We price every FBS game ourselves: a fair spread, total and moneyline with no vig, built as a probability distribution of the final score that knows football’s key numbers. We compare that price to the market and keep score with closing line value and calibration, never short-run wins.

Team ratings (Method A)

Every FBS team, and every FCS team they play, has a rating in points, learned game by game from final margins (a Kalman filter: each result moves a rating by how surprising it was and how sure we already were). Each rating sits on its tier’s level: power conferences at 0, the Group of Six and FCS levels learned from the games between tiers (about 15 and 39 points below). Over the summer a team keeps 80% of its distance from its tier. Home field (2.6 points), byes, short weeks and the time zones the visitors crossed are fitted, never assumed. When a team changes tier, SMU into the ACC or an FCS program moving up, its rating moves with it.

Every game is learned from twice: its final score, and its closing line, a second and sharper reading of how far apart the two teams were (the close holds the injury reports and the market’s money). How much the close counts was chosen on 2013–19 like every other setting. A game never sees its own line: it enters the ratings with the game’s result.

Totals (Method B)

Each team’s scoring tendency (its offense and defense together) and the league’s scoring level, the same way, learned from each game’s final total and its closing total. Higher totals scatter more, so our over and under chances use a spread of results that grows with the total.

From a number to a price

A projected margin becomes a probability for every final margin: a bell curve as wide as our typical miss, bent toward the margins college games actually end on. Games end by 3 about 10% of the time, by 7 about 8%, and 10, 14, 17, 21, 24 and 28 stand out too. Overtime means no ties. Spreads, totals and moneylines are all readings of that one distribution.

Where an edge could be

Against the closing line, our ratings know nothing the market doesn’t, as on the NBA and NFL pages. Against the opener it is different: in three separate periods (2014–16, 2021–25 and 2026 so far), when our number was several points from the first line posted, the close usually moved toward ours. Beating the closing number is the leading sign of an edge; the Picks tab records each book’s opener so that can be measured live.

Betting principles

Paper before money. No real bets until 300+ logged picks show positive average closing line value.
Walk forward, always. Every prediction uses only what was known before kickoff.
Be honest about results. Settings were chosen on 2013–19 and judged on 2021–25, untouched; no tuned setting sits on the edge of its search grid; every run is logged.
Check the news. A gap of 7+ points from the book usually means something our numbers don’t know: a quarterback out, opt-outs before a bowl.

If betting stops being fun, call or text 1-800-GAMBLER.

Which games show

The Slate opens on every game with an AP Top 25 team, whether or not its opponent is ranked. The first dropdown switches to one conference (a game shows when either team plays in it) or to All FBS. The week dropdown holds last week, this week and next. Ranks beside the names are this week’s AP poll.

Reading a card

Our line: the big number, the fair spread rounded to the half point.
Fair moneyline and wins: the home team’s chance to win, no vig.
Our total and team totals: they add up to our total and differ by our spread.
Under the names: each team’s rating, points against an average power-conference team.

Using it

Press Use FanDuel or Use DraftKings to fill every box with that book’s current line, or type your own. The card then says LEAN (the best bet returns +3% or more on average at your price), PASS, or CHECK NEWS (your book is 7+ points from us on the spread or total: usually news we don’t have, such as a quarterback out). Each probability includes pushes on whole-number lines.

Log pick

Saves the pick (paper by default) for the Picks tab, with the book’s opener at that moment, so closing line value can be measured from the first number posted. The confirmation shows Full Kelly: the share of your bankroll that grows it fastest if our chance to win is exactly right. Ours is an estimate, so many bettors stake a half or a quarter of it, and none when it reads 0%.

Parlay

The Parlay button beside Guide opens a parlay slip. Your parlay: pick a game and tap any option to add it (tap again to take it off), priced at the numbers on its card or, when it has none, the book’s current line; Add to parlay in Log pick does the same from a card. Change a leg’s price to match your book. Our chance that every leg wins is the legs’ chances multiplied, as if the games were unrelated. Type the book’s parlay price, or leave it blank for the legs’ prices multiplied, to see the fair price, EV and Kelly. A push drops its leg and the book pays the rest. Legs from the same game are flagged: they move together, so the numbers are off for them. Suggested shows our model’s highest-EV and likeliest +EV parlays, marked unproven. Log parlay (two legs or more) saves it to Picks, paper or real money, graded as its legs finish; Picks has a Parlays filter.

After the game

The card shows the score, and a line grades a LEAN or CHECK against FanDuel’s closing line.

Conferences

Every FBS conference’s table as ESPN publishes it: conference record first (it decides the title game), then the overall record, home, away, point difference and streak, in the conference’s own tiebreaker order. The dropdown shows one conference or all of them; a number before a team is its AP rank. The page reads ESPN when you open it (again after five minutes), and shows the copy saved with the morning’s slate if ESPN does not answer. On a phone, Home, Away and Diff are left out to fit the screen.

The Betting view

Record or Betting at the top switches the columns. Betting shows each team’s season so far the way a bettor reads it, from the morning’s run (the record beside it stays ESPN’s, live).

ATS: Against the spread: how often the team covered CollegeFootballData’s consensus closing line (the middle of the books it lists), as wins-losses (and pushes, when there are any). A team covers when its margin beats its line: a 7-point favorite has to win by 8.
Cover: How many points a game the team beat the spread by, on average. Above 0, the market has been underrating it.
O/U: How often its games went over or under the closing total.
Power: Our team rating (Method A): points better than an average power-conference team, ranked among every FBS team, and its rank. It is who would win a game today, apart from the record.
Luck: Wins minus the wins the team’s points scored and allowed predict (the Pythagorean formula, exponent 2.37). A team well above 0 has won its close games, and that seldom lasts; one well below has lost them.

None of these is a bet on its own: the closing line already knows most of it. They show where a team’s record and the market have parted ways, and early in a season one game moves every number. A game against an FCS team counts, as it does in the record. On a phone, Cover is left out to fit the screen.

The 2026 rules

12 teams. The SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC champions get in automatically.
So does the highest-ranked team from the Group of Six (the American, Conference USA, the MAC, the Mountain West, the Pac-12 and the Sun Belt), champion or not.
Notre Dame gets in if the committee ranks it in the top 12. The rest are at-large, by rank.
Seeds follow the committee’s ranking exactly; the top four get a first-round bye. Seeds 5–8 host the first round on campus; there is no reseeding.

Rankings

The committee’s top 25 (weekly from Tuesday, November 3; gold numbers are the top 12), the AP and Coaches polls, and our own power ranking from the team ratings.

Our two rankings

They answer two questions. Our power ranking (on Rankings, and the Power column in the Projection) is who would win a game today: the rank of the rating our lines use, built from scores and closing lines. The projection is who the committee will pick, and the committee ranks records first: an unbeaten team with a lower power rank usually sits above a stronger team with two losses, and a Group of Six champion gets a bid however it rates. When the two disagree, both are right about their own question.

Projection

We play the rest of the season thousands of times. Each run draws every team’s true strength from our ratings and their uncertainty, plays every game, crowns the conference champions (the top two in each league meet; ties are broken by strength, a stand-in for each league’s own tiebreakers), ranks the teams the way the committee has since 2014, and builds the field by the rules above. The percentages are how often each thing happened.

How good is the committee model?

Fitted on every committee ranking from 2014 to 2025 and tested one season at a time, it found about 11 of the committee’s final 12 on average; the AP poll of the same week found slightly more. Record and strength of schedule matter more to the committee than how good a team looks: ratings alone find only about 9.

Bracket

The twelve teams most often in the field, seeded by their average seed when in. From Selection Day, December 6, it is the committee’s own.

When our line is far from the books’, the books usually know something we do not: a quarterback out, a suspension, a player dismissed. This page puts the news next to the lines, one card per game still to play this week, so you can see whether the gap has a reason. Games go by kickoff.

Reading a game

Spread and total: Ours in gold, then the opener (the first number posted) and each book’s, all for the home team. Ours against the opener and the books shows how far the line has moved and which way. The book lines are the newest this browser has seen: the morning run’s, then whatever the Slate fetched since.
Out: Each team’s quarterback first: the one who threw the most passes in its last two games, with his status if the availability report lists him. Then the running backs, receivers and tight ends the report lists as out, doubtful or questionable. Red is out or doubtful; gold is questionable. The SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC publish a report for each conference game, three, two and one day before kickoff and again on game day; other conferences and non-conference games have none. Full report shows everyone listed, by status.
Notes: ESPN’s stories about either team and the game’s preview, newest first, three to a game, two on a phone (All shows the rest). Tap one for its summary and the link to the story. Roundups that name a dozen teams are left out.

Filters

24h, 3d, 7d: How far back the notes go.
Games: The AP Top 25 (any game with a ranked team), all FBS games, or one conference, as on the Slate.
Tags: Each note is tagged from its headline: Injury, Role (starting, benched, depth chart), Move (a transfer, a dismissal, a coaching change), Preview, Game (a recap) or Note. Game starts off, since recaps say little about the next game. The tags are read from words in the headline, so now and then one is off.

Where it comes from

The availability reports, from the conferences, and the quarterbacks’ passes, from CollegeFootballData, are read by the morning run, and again every two hours on Saturdays from 9 AM to 7 PM to catch the game-day reports. The stories are ESPN’s, read again when this tab opens and on Refresh, and kept ten minutes.

What a betting line is

A sportsbook posts three kinds of line for every game.

Spread. Georgia −7 means Georgia is expected to win by about 7. A bet on Georgia wins if they win by 8 or more; if they win by exactly 7 it is a push, and the money comes back.
Total. 52.5 is the book’s guess at both teams’ points added together. You bet over or under it.
Moneyline. Just who wins, at a price. −150 means bet $150 to win $100 (a favorite); +130 means bet $100 to win $130 (an underdog).

What the closing line is

Lines move as people bet and news comes in. The last line before kickoff is the closing line. By then it holds the injury news, who is starting at quarterback and the money of the sharpest bettors, so it is the best public prediction of how a game will finish.

Why it’s the number to beat

If our line can come close to the closing line, our method is about as good as the whole market. That is why every grade on the Backtest page compares a method with the closing line on the same games.

The typical miss

How far the final margin lands from the line in an ordinary game: about 15.3 points, more than two touchdowns, and more than in the NFL (about 13). College games are more lopsided, and a power team against a small school can win by almost anything.

Key numbers

Points come in 3s (field goals) and 7s (touchdowns), so games end by exactly 3 or 7 far more often than by 5 or 9. A line of 3 or 7 is a push close to one game in ten. There are no ties: overtime runs until someone wins.

Three things we found

The market misses least when one team is far stronger, and most in Group of Six games.
Totals are about as hard as spreads: the closing total misses by about 15.7.
Bigger totals scatter more: a 70-point game is harder to call than a 40-point one.

The closing line is the market’s last price before kickoff, after the bets and the news are in. It is the best public forecast of a college game, so it is our benchmark. This page measures how close it came to the final scores on the 2021–25 test seasons, the same games every method is graded on.

Key numbers

The chart counts how often test-season games ended by each margin from 1 to 28 points (either team winning). The gold bars are what happened. The dashed line is what a bell curve centered on each game’s closing line expects; the blue dots are our key-number model, fitted on 2013–19 only. Games ended by exactly 3 about 9.8% of the time, nearly three times the bell curve’s 3.6%, and by 7 about 7.9%. The table under it shows pushes on the key lines: how often a game that closed at a whole-number spread landed exactly on it.

Spreads and totals

Spread RMSE: How far final margins landed from the closing spread, as a root-mean-square error: the typical miss, with big misses counting extra. About 15.32 points on the test seasons.
Spread of misses: The width of the bell curve fitted to tune-season margins around the close, about 15.8 points, before the key numbers bend it.
Total RMSE: How far final totals (both teams’ points) landed from the closing total. About 15.74 points.
Scatter by total: Higher totals scatter more, so the over and under chances use a spread of results that grows with the total (see Method B on the Backtest page).
The close by matchup: The close’s miss in each kind of game, next to ours. It misses least when a power team plays a Group of Six or FCS team: one side is far stronger, and the margin is easier to call than you’d think.

Where the close comes from

CollegeFootballData lists each game’s lines from several sportsbooks. Our close is the middle (median) of them, number by number, which ignores one book with a stale or mistyped line. From 2020 it lists each book’s opener too, which is how the Backtest page measures closing line value.

RMSE, and how close to normal college margins are

Model the home margin as m = −s + e with s the closing home spread; if the line is unbiased the RMSE is sd(e). For normal e, E|e| = σ√(2/π) ≈ 0.798σ. College gives 0.79 (mean absolute miss over RMSE on the test games), near the normal and above the NFL’s 0.77: margins pile on 3 and 7, but the tails are close to Gaussian.

From a line to a chance

plain normal: P(home wins) = Φ(μ/σ) 7-point favorite, σ = 15.8: Φ(0.443) = 67.1% key numbers: P(M = k) ∝ w(|k|)·normal mass at k, w(0) = 0 push on a line of exactly 7: about 6% in the model (a plain normal says 2.6%)

The full key-number model and its fitting are in the Backtest guide.

How well a season pins it down

SE(σ̂) ≈ σ·√((κ − 1) / (4n)) κ = kurtosis κ = 3, about 900 FBS games: SE ≈ 15.3/√1,800 ≈ 0.36

One season can’t tell a 15.3 RMSE from a 15.7. Comparing two forecasts on the same games is far sharper: SE ≈ rms(disagreement)/√n, about ±0.06 for Method A over five seasons.

A scale that grows with the total

e = T − c_T, σ(c_T) = a + b·c_T fit: least squares of |e|·√(π/2) on c_T, tune seasons a = 10.22, b = 0.112: σ(45) ≈ 15.2, σ(70) ≈ 18.0

The NFL’s scatter barely changes with the line; college totals run from the 30s to the 80s, and the heteroskedasticity is large enough to move over/under chances by several points at the extremes.

Removing the book’s cut

quotes π_i = 1/D_i, Σ π_i = 1 + overround power p_i = π_i^k, k solves π_home^k + π_away^k = 1

f(k) is strictly decreasing when each π < 1, so k is unique, and the longshot gives up a larger share of the overround: the favorite–longshot bias. College moneylines are often lopsided (−2000 / +1000), where the power method and the plain multiplicative method differ most.

Limits

One consensus close per game, the median of the books listed: robust to one bad line, a little softer than a sharp book’s close. Openers only from 2020. The live season records FanDuel’s and DraftKings’ lines and openers from Action Network.

What we collected

Every FBS game from 2006 to today, plus the FCS games needed to rate the smaller schools FBS teams play. For each game: the final score, where it was played, each team’s conference that season and, from 2013, the betting market’s closing line.

Where it came from

ESPN’s public scoreboard (games and rankings), CollegeFootballData (betting lines, with a free key) and Action Network (this week’s FanDuel and DraftKings lines). We paid for nothing.

How we checked it

At least 98% of the games we grade must have a closing spread, and no season fewer than 95%. 99.0% do, so the page passes.

What’s missing

Betting lines before 2013, opening lines before 2020, and weather.