Favorite or underdog. It's a choice we all must make 16 times during an NFL regular season. Obviously there are times when we must go with the favorite, but my gut and experience tells me that there are certain times when we almost have to go with the underdog. Here are my primary reasons:



1) Teams are relatively even nowadays, or they're supposed to be at least. Due to the nature of the draft, the worst team should always get the best players. This helps prevent 10 years of dominance by one team which is great for all NFL fans, but is even better for underdog bettors. Consider the past 5 years of superbowl winners and you'll see what I mean. No-one would have made those football picks at the beginning of the season.

2) In college football picks, teams are given a certain amount of ranking points for the sheer number of points they win by. This leads to the favorites blowing out the underdog so they can get any advantage possible in the rankings. This is not the case for the NFL. Since a team only has to win to get the full value, it leads to the favorite calling off the dogs, and possibly allowing the underdog to slip back into the point spread.

3) The underdogs simply get no respect. Not from the media nor from fellow bettors. This effect builds upon itself and causes less and less people to pick these teams. This is where you can clean up because just like the media and the fans, the favorites tend to take the underdog lightly as well. If they do this, and you called it at the right time, you will be very successful at making the right NFL pick. It's always good to at least be aware of a bandwagon effect, in anything, not just football picks. But in this case, you can remove any potential emotional attachment to the team you're picking, and pick solely based on your knowledge.