Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, claims that about 5% of all college basketball games with a large point spread are fixed. College basketball is the easiest target because one or two people can easily shave some points and win the game but not cover the spread. Easy money for gamblers and as long as the team wins, no one is going to question the players for only winning by 9 instead of 10.
Smaller favorites — teams favored by 12 or fewer points — beat the spread almost exactly 50 percent of the time, showing how good those oddsmakers are at their jobs. But heavy favorites cover in only 47 percent of their games. There is little chance that the difference is due to randomness.
There is a strange dearth of games in which 12-point favorites win by, say, 13 or 16 points. And there are a lot of games that they win by 11 points or slightly less. There is just no good explanation for this.
So here’s the lesson here – unless you know the fix is in, don’t bet on the heavy favorites, especially if the point guard looks like he owes someone money.
[NYTimes]: Sad Suspicions About Scores in Basketball
