As we close in on the College Football Playoff, one tool that I utilize this time of year is the manufactured parlay. Many people are tempted to play a team to win the championship now that we are in the home stretch, and the likely path to the title is laid out. Most people will look to play that in the futures market, but there is often a better way to play someone to win the title.
When playing a manufactured parlay, you simply roll over the moneyline in each game, instead of betting into the futures pool. For example, if you wanted to play Georgia to win the title, then you would bet the moneyline in the SEC title game and then roll it over into the moneyline of the semifinals and one more time in the finals.
This is not something that you can do until we get deeper into the season but works well in the NCAA tournament, NFL playoffs and College Football Playoffs, since you are able to accurately project the point spread and thus the moneyline of most of the upcoming games. When I am doing my math, I operate on the most likely scenario. Let’s look at a couple of teams in the college football playoffs and see if the moneyline or the futures market would be a better way to bet them.
Let’s focus on the Pac-12 title game since those are good examples of a long shot and one of the favorites which gives us examples of both sets of pricing. Each has two possible routes, so we will break both down.