Betting On Football In The United States

This is a resource site primarily for residents of the USA, so we will be covering American gambling laws and sites in detail. That doesn't mean that people outside of the USA won't find our information useful; it just means that our target audience is Americans. That being said, the first thing most Americans should understand when dealing with football bets is that, in 46 of 50 states, gambling is strictly prohibited by multiple federal regulations. Government has worked hard over the past few decades to really shut down the ability of any entrepreneur to open up a gambling house. This means that websites are not allowed to operate inside of America, nor are bookies allowed to open up. Any type of business that knowingly accepts money that's intended for a wager is technically illegal.

The good news here, however, is that the illegality of sports betting only extends to those who wish to open up gambling houses and sites. The government doesn't have any stipulations against the average American spending his or her hard-earned money on betting. So, as long as you're finding a legal location at which to place your bets, you are legally allowed to do so. This is the large loophole through which millions of gamblers jump every year. And it's a large loophole that's always been there. After all, if gambling was illegal for American citizens, then the government would have a hard time explaining their lotteries or places like Vegas. This is why government has always sought to make gambling establishments illegal, but not the act of gambling itself. So as long as you can find a site that's located outside of American jurisdiction, it is 100% legal for you to gamble there. And at Bet On Football USA, we're out to deliver this information to you, so that you can make the safest choice you can.

Commissioner Adam Silver of the National Basketball Association (NBA) has outright stated that he believes sports betting should be legal and regulated. He believes that it's a waste of time, money and other resources to crack down so hard on an activity that Americans are just going to do anyway. It would be much better to simply regulate it; it would clean things up and even improve on the quality of the odds. However, other league commissioners don't seem to be that progressives. MLB loathes gambling. They allow drug users, spousal abusers and other criminals back into the game, but they still have a lifetime ban placed on Pete Rose for gambling. The NFL isn't much better. Commissioner Goodell, seemingly afraid of facing any bad criticism after the Ray Rice situation, refuses to even address the issue. Instead, his cronies come out to speak about sports betting. But when they do so, they don't even address the actual topic; they simply address the rumors that the NFL doesn't want legal sports betting because the NFL cannot figure out how to profit from legal sports betting. Spokespeople are quick to shoot down those rumors, but we can't really know where the NFL brand stands on the morality and overall legality of wagering on sports.

Judging the NFL's silence on the issue, it's safe to assume that Roger Goodell and company don't want anything to do with legal sports betting. After all, it harms them more than hurts them. At least this is what they probably think. It takes away a lot of the mystique of the NFL. They're probably afraid it will hurt their television ratings, which is where the bulk of their revenue comes from. They don't know how to siphon any of that money into their coffers, and thus they seem to be afraid that legal gambling will somehow siphon money away from them. Of course, this is just a deduction made based on the attitudes of the NFL. We really don't know for certain where they stand. We can only guess by the way they act in relation to sports betting.

Billions upon billions of dollars exchange hands every year with NFL betting. The sport is so incredibly large that people even bet huge on preseason games. One reason that the games attract so much attention is that they're in limited supply. With the NBA, you have 82 games in the regular season, and the same with hockey. With baseball, you have a whopping 162 games in the regular season. With the NFL, you have only 16 games. This is a very limited window. The NFL season, from start to finish, is only around four months out of the year. Every Sunday is a big deal with the NFL, and you can find people betting on thousands of different websites.

With today's sportsbooks, you can find much more than simple favorites and standard lines like point spreads and over-under lines. You can also find live betting options, which allow you to bet on action quarter-by-quarter while the game is being played, and on outcomes of certain quarters and certain stats, and much more. You can also find tons of proposition bets to place, like how many yards a player will pass for, and even bets like which team wins the opening coin toss. And there's also a very robust fantasy sports betting genre, where players actually face off against one another with their drafted teams to see which player ends up winning.

One thing to keep in mind here, however, is that America doesn't have many online sportsbooks that are licensed and regulated within the nation. This means that, most likely, you're going to have a find a site based offshore that's outside of the US's jurisdiction. And when you're dealing with foreign sites, you never know what you're going to be dealing with judging these sites by how they present themselves. This is where a resource like ours comes in handy. We help you discover which sites are legitimate and which you should avoid. We find sites that openly accept US players and that offer a ton of different betting options for you to participate in.

If you thought the NFL season was limited, then the NCAA season is basically qualified as rare. Most Division-One NCAA men's football teams only play a schedule of 11 games, and only 10 if they don't have a conference championship (e.g. the Big 12: Baylor, TCU, Longhorns, etc). This gives gamblers an extremely limited window to bet on their favorite games. The NCAA did extend their season just last year, by getting away from the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) and going with a four-team playoff structure. This extended the season by two extra games, but even still it falls well short of even the NFL. When the NCAA betting season is on, people are clamoring all around to get in their bets on a week by week basis.

By and large, you're going to find the same types of bets available for the NCAA that are available for the NFL. This means basic point spreads, O/Us, favorites and underdogs, proposition bets, live betting options, group bets, parlays, and much more. The biggest difference here is that the information for NCAA teams may not be as readily available. This is due to a few reasons. First and foremost, these are amateur players and thus there isn't the same level of media dedicated to college athletes, outside of rare exceptions to the rule like the Alabama Crimson Tide or the Ohio State Buckeyes. Large-market programs will have their own networks (e.g. the SEC Network), but information on the majority of teams is much harder to find. Then you have to take into account the sheer number of teams. There are like six D1 teams in Texas alone, with California having four or five legitimate contenders, and even West Virginia and Ohio having two or three. This means hundreds of teams and thousands of players. It's very hard to keep track of everything.

Bet On Football USA cannot promise to keep you abreast of the weekly goings-on with every college football team, but we can certainly help you navigate the tricky terrain of USA-friendly sportsbooks. You'll just have to do all the player and team-based research on your own.

Nobody can accurately predict an event like the Super Bowl. Even people last year who saw the Denver Broncos getting to the big game against the Carolina Panthers couldn't have predicted the outcome, and they most certainly did not predict it. Almost universally was the case that oddsmakers had Carolina blowing Denver out, and it was actually reversed on the field. So when we're speaking about the favorites to win the Super Bowl, it's just that: Teams that are favored to win. In no way are these predictions guarantees. That being said, let's have a look at the teams favored to win this year's Super Bowl.

At 15/2, the team with the best odds this year is the New England Patriots. With the best receiving corp in football, the best coach in the game, and perhaps the greatest quarterback to ever play, the New England Patriots are always atop the list, and have been for the past 13 seasons. However, this year is different because the AFC is looking more wide open than ever. There is some competition there that might give the Pats some problems, but other than a potentially tough match-up with the Steelers, the Pats are expected to basically glide to the big game. Part of the reason is that Pittsburgh gets beat up in their conference with the Ravens and Bengals, whereas the Pats are likely to have the best record and home field advantage. New England has also improved its running game and offensive line this season, and they have a lot to prove after being defeated by Denver in last year's AFC Championship game.

Up next, at 9/1, are the Seattle Seahawks. Russell Wilson is turning out to be a legitimate top-5 NFL quarterback, and that defense is rumored to be back to its pristine form this season, or maybe even better. Seattle's road to the Super Bowl may be cut short if the road has to go through Green Bay or Arizona. But if the Seahawks can claim the top seed, then everyone has to go through them, and this is a tough order that might not work out very well. We could end up looking at a Patriots-Seahawks rematch.

At 10/1, you shouldn't sleep on the Pittsburgh Steelers. Barring a late-game fumble last year, Pittsburgh may have wound up in the big game themselves. They have a stellar running back, the best wide receiver in the game in Antonio Brown, and Big Ben Roethlisberger is a proven winner. Their division is very tough, as even the Cleveland Browns have improved their lot with RGIII and a good group of receivers. They're a team that could definitely make a push to Super Bowl 51 if they can brazen through the competition and come out with momentum.

Rounding out our list, we have the Green Bay Packers. At 11/1, the Packers are hanging in there. While Brady with the Pats might be all-time great, Aaron Rodgers is currently the best QB playing in the league. And now that Jordy Nelson is healthy, they have a legit top-5 wide receiver. Eddie Lacy is also in much better shape this season, as well as being healthy, and the Pack's defense has improved. Look for these teams in your conference championship games: The Pats and Steelers for the AFC, and the Pack and 'Hawks in the NFC.

There are legitimately over a hundred D1 contenders for the NCAA College Football Playoff, so pinning these predictions down is much, much harder. However, the biggest reason that this is tough to do is because one single loss can knock a team out, or put a team in. It's really very tough to predict how things will turn out. Take Alabama last season, the eventual National Championship winner, as a prime example. They were ranked #1 until they lost to Ole Miss, which knocked them out of the playoff completely. However, they defeated a top-10 team in Georgia, and then beat the #2 team in LSU, and they fought their way back in. Meanwhile, losing only one game knocked out Notre Dame and TCU and Baylor completely, while it didn't end up hurting the Oklahoma Sooners or the Michigan State Spartans. So we're dealing with things like momentum and schedule strength and the daisy chain of who beats whom. It goes without saying that we cannot judge these criteria in the preseason. However, there are some teams expected to do well. Let's cover who we feel will be in the playoffs.

Leading the way at +550, playing out of the SEC West, are the Alabama Crimson Tide. Yeah, for people who don't like Alabama or repeat winners, they may be sick of seeing the Tide at the top every season. However, Nick Saban has had a top-10 defense for nearly a decade straight, and the Tide have been to the previous two playoffs. Every single season they lose a huge chunk of their talent to the NFL Draft, yet every season they replace that talent. This year is no different for 'Bama, as they're ranked #1 in the composite recruiting rankings. This means that Alabama has replenished its stock, and so long as they can get to and secure the SEC Championship, the committee will punch their ticket, even as a two-loss team. The SEC commands that much respect in the NCAA BCS/CFB rankings.

Next, coming in at +700, we have the Oklahoma Sooners. This team shocked many people last year with how well the air-it-out offense of Lincoln Riley performed in the Big 12, but the cat's out of the bag now, and the Sooners are actually expected to repeat their results. While TCU and Baylor and Oklahoma State have a lot of talent to replace, even quarterbacks in some cases, the Sooners have Baker Mayfield returning. This isn't just some flash in the pan kid who had a decent season. He was in the Heisman race last season and was considered to be the best player in the Big 12 in the past decade. And seeing as the Big 12 is very weak defensively, even factoring for TCU and Baylor, oddsmakers feel as if Oklahoma has the distinct advantage.

Neck and Neck with Oklahoma at +700 are the Clemson Tigers in the ACC. Let's be honest: A huge part of the reason that they're favored so highly to get back to the playoff is that the ACC is one of the weakest power-five conferences of all time. While the ACC is a force to be reckoned with in basketball, Duke, Boston Collage, North Carolina, Virginia and Syracuse rarely make noise on the football field. The only other decent team in the ACC at the moment is Florida State, but they simply don't have the talent necessary to compete with Clemson, especially their defense vs. Clemson's high-powered offense with Deshaun Watson returning at the QB position. It's certainly not going to be a cakewalk, but the Tigers have a great chance at returning to the playoff.

Rounding out the list at +1000 are the Ohio State Buckeyes. Polls and predictions are a dime a dozen, but almost everyone has Ohio State making the playoff this year, even if as the 4 seed. The reason is that Urban Meyer is much like Nick Saban in that he has created a system, not a player/talent-driven team. So while Cardale Jones and Ezekiel Elliot may have moved on to the NFL, J.T. Barrett, a great receiving corp, and a hard-nosed defense are all still in place. Plus you have to factor in that the Big Ten isn't exactly churning out a bunch of great teams. Michigan State has likely fallen off completely, and the Michigan Wolverines will be the Buckeyes' only real competition. This places Ohio State in the driver's seat to win the Big Ten championship, which should put them into the playoff.

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