Jeff Haney advises against following the money on games this NFL season

Friday, Nov. 10, 2006 | 6:57 a.m.

Here's a bit of advice for bettors trying to win some cash by betting NFL games this season:

Don't follow the money.

Line moves in the first nine weeks of the NFL's regular season have, by and large, been unsuccessful in beating the point spread, according to an analysis comparing the opening numbers with the closing betting line.

This indicates that oddsmakers have been setting solid opening numbers, and that trying to piggyback onto lines that are moving in one direction has been a losing strategy for NFL bettors.

We looked at the opening line released each week by Las Vegas Sports Consultants, the oddsmaking group that provides betting lines to most Nevada casinos, and the consensus closing number in Las Vegas.

Our analysis focused on games in which the point spread moved at least 1 point off the opener, which has happened 58 times, or an average of just over six times a week, this season.

In those 58 games, the line moved in favor of the eventual point-spread winner 27 times and toward the eventual point-spread loser 30 times, with one push, or point-spread tie.

In other words, the line moves went 27-30-1 against the spread for a subpar winning rate of 47.3 percent.

And that represents the best possible outcome for bettors trying to follow the money.

In a handful of games, early bettors who snapped up the first available line ended up with a win or a push, but late bettors who played into the closing number ended up with a losing ticket on the same game.

Taking into account those games - in which the final score differential fell between the opening and closing point spreads - bettors trying to follow the money would have a dismal record of 23-35, or 39.6 percent against the spread.

So bettors have actually been able to turn a profit by "fading" - or betting against - line moves off the opening number in the NFL this year.

Similar studies of NFL line moves could yield slightly different results, due to discrepancies in opening and closing lines.

There usually is not one, universally agreed-upon opening line in a given NFL game.

Moses (or even Scotty Schettler) does not descend from the mountaintop each week with the official opening NFL lines carved into stone tablets. We relied on the Las Vegas Sports Consultants' numbers for this analysis, but precise opening lines vary by sports book.

Likewise, bettors who scramble around town (or around cyberspace, for those so inclined) can find off-market numbers that differ from the consensus closers. We also disregarded lines that might have moved more than a point but then bounced back by kickoff.

In general, though, early line moves are driven by money from sophisticated sports bettors who hold their own opinion in higher regard than the oddsmakers'. Yet in the NFL this season, they have done a poor job of predicting the outcome of the game vis-a-vis the point spread.

Several point spreads have moved off their openers this week:

Follow those line moves at the betting windows at your peril.