Article Outline: One of the most popular events in the United States of America is the NFL Football League or NCAA College Football. Whether it's a pro football game or a college football game, sports handicapping has become a common feature and an integral part of these games. This article lists some of the best tips to make loot out of football handicapping.

College and Professional handicapping (NFL):
Football is a popular sport in colleges as well as at the pro level. It's in college that players learn the sport that assures them a passport to the national football league or the known as the NFL. Football in America came into the limelight, after a match between the Harvard University and McGill University at Montreal in 1874. At that time football handicapping was almost nonexistent. Since then football in America has caused many heartbreaks, but created some legends like Sammy Baugh (QB for Washington Redskins), Johnny Unitas (QB for Baltimore Colts), Bronko Nagurski (RB for Chicago bears), O.J. Simpson (RB for Buffalo Bills) and Gino Marchetti (DE for Dallas Texans).

Football over the years has won many hearts and has been a team game played with an interesting combination of power and strategy. As the game has climbed greater heights, football handicapping too has followed in its footsteps and is considered to be a common occurrence before and after every game. There are many key factors that create an advantage or a disadvantage in terms of sports handicapping in NFL. It all depends upon the picks made by a team, the players form, the defenders and the quarterbacks. Let us look at the key factors that are essential to football handicapping.

Football Handicapping Statistics: The first and the foremost is statistics. A team's future performance can be judges based on the current statistics. When we say future, it means the next game in the league. Whether it is college football handicapping or pro football, you need to consider the statistics related to offense and defense put up by each team. Some of the details would include the total number of yards in each game, passing yards per game, rushing yards in each game, number of points scored, total number of yards allowed etc. All this needs to be considered in professional football handicapping. Another aspect that plays an important role is the strength of the team as it enters the league or the conference season.

Handicapping advantage:
There is a distinct advantage of playing on home field and this is not just valid for football or NFL but also for NBA, MLB and even the small inter college games. For example, in 2003, LSU destroyed Auburn completely by 31-7 and most of this was due to the home crowd advantage. In this game people had laid only 3 ? points. A similar incident was where Florida State team traveled to Clemson. It was the hot favorite with 17 points but Florida lost in front of a Clemson home crowd of 86,000 voices. So you need to weight the home field advantage before jumping to a conclusion in football handicapping.

Football handicapping and Trends: Every team has its own story and in sports handicapping, you need to also focus on the trend followed by each team. This will lay open each team's advantages, disadvantages, weaknesses and strengths. Whether it is a college football team or a pro football championship winner, trends, like some teams following a certain pattern in the dying minutes of the game, can prove useful and lead to effective football handicapping. Then there are trends followed by certain coaches who use a particular strategy with only a particular team like the strategy used by Colorado squad coached by Gary Barnett against Texas Tech Red Raiders.

These are the three key areas that will ensure that you are at an advantageous position during football handicapping.