Proximity to location a big factor for college football teams during bowl season
Ashton Grewal

There are three things you need to know before you bet any college football game this bowl season: who’s playing, what’s the pointspread and where is it being played.

Last year teams that traveled fewer miles than their opponents went 29-12 straight up (22-19 ATS) in the 41 college football bowls including the national championship game.

This wasn’t a one-year fluke either. Steve Yoost submitted a study to the Sport Journal in 2009 on the geographical effects on college bowl games. He looked at all 47 BCS bowl games from 1998 to 2009 to try and determine how proximity to a bowl game location can factor as an advantage.

He found that teams with the shorter trip covered the spread at a 55 percent rate (26-21) and 58 percent (24-17) when excluding games with negligible distance differences between the two traveling teams.

Yoost concluded the bowl system needs to be changed so that there wouldn’t be as much of a built-in advantage for schools playing in their own backyard. The problem is, of course, the people deciding the matchups aren’t interested in making things fair. They want the games to sellout and there to be enough local interest so that tickets can be marked up.

It’s much easier to drum up interest when one of the teams playing is essentially a home team. Take Florida Atlantic for example. The Owls will be playing in their home stadium for this year’s Boca Raton Bowl. Last year’s announced attendance for the game was a little over 25,000 in a stadium that holds 30,000, but pictures tell a story different story.

The Boca Raton Bowl committee is thrilled to have a locate team to pedal in its quest to sell this game out. Florida Atlantic opened as 17.5-point chalk against Akron but the line was quickly bet up to 22.5.

Here are a few more games with a large disparity in distance between the invited schools.

Military Bowl
Navy vs. Virginia
Odds: Pick, 55
Location: Navy’s home field

Liberty Bowl
Memphis vs. Iowa State
Odds: Memphis -3.5, 66
Location: Memphis’ home field

Orange Bowl
Miami vs. Wisconsin
Odds: Wisconsin -6.5, 45
Location: Miami’s home field

Belk Bowl
Wake Forest vs. Texas A&M
Odds: Wake -3, 64.5
Location: Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte NC – a little over an hour away from Wake’s campus.