We are a month away from training camps, two months away from the preseason and three months away from the NFL regular season, so now is the time to put in your leg work for NFL 2003. I still haven't decided if I am going to bet the NFL or NCAA football, but if you are, you should be starting your handicapping now.
Be ready when August and September roll around. It only takes probably an hour or less per day. Take 45 minutes or an hour and go and look at recruiting news, spring practice info, etc. for every NCAA team you plan on handicapping during the season. For the NFL, you can usually find local newspaper reports at least once a week for each team, sometimes once a day.
Add quantitative research to your offseason efforts. Go back to last season's results and try to find angles to play. Were certain stats, trends, situations, angles, etc. more, less or the same as effective as in years past? Look at things like how teams play coming off road games, home games, high scoring games, low scoring games, etc. Maybe you will find something that you can look for when the season rolls around.
As with anything else in life, 80-90% of your work will probably be relatively useless. You may think you have a nice angle after looking a four or five weeks of results but once you look through an entire season's worth of results, nothing will come of it. Don't worry about that. The 10-20% that is useful will be worth its weight in gold once the season starts.
Be ready when August and September roll around. It only takes probably an hour or less per day. Take 45 minutes or an hour and go and look at recruiting news, spring practice info, etc. for every NCAA team you plan on handicapping during the season. For the NFL, you can usually find local newspaper reports at least once a week for each team, sometimes once a day.
Add quantitative research to your offseason efforts. Go back to last season's results and try to find angles to play. Were certain stats, trends, situations, angles, etc. more, less or the same as effective as in years past? Look at things like how teams play coming off road games, home games, high scoring games, low scoring games, etc. Maybe you will find something that you can look for when the season rolls around.
As with anything else in life, 80-90% of your work will probably be relatively useless. You may think you have a nice angle after looking a four or five weeks of results but once you look through an entire season's worth of results, nothing will come of it. Don't worry about that. The 10-20% that is useful will be worth its weight in gold once the season starts.
