West Virginia Mountaineers Football in the Eyes of Sports Betting Sites
Beloved by fans and respected by rivals, the West Virginia Mountaineers are a side with a lot of pedigree and history behind them, along with plenty of local support.
Of course no matter how much you think you know a team, it is unlikely that you have done as much research and number-crunching as the people who put together odds packages for sportsbook providers.
In fact it can be informative to investigate how a team stacks up according to the arguably neutral betting platforms out there, so here is a look at what West Virginia’s prospects are panning out like from this particular perspective.
Considering the sites available
Before delving deeper into the specific matter of the Mountaineers’ impact on the wider world of sports betting, it is worth touching briefly on the sites and services which are worth using.
For any West Virginian residents who want to place wagers, it is best to check out the best WV betting sites found here. This is because you should always endeavor to play on officially licensed sites and services.
At the moment, BetMGM is the only provider to offer sports betting via sanctioned online channels to residents of and visitors to the state.
Even so, there are of course lots of other sports betting sites out there which are licensed and above-board; it just happens that they have yet to get a foothold in WV. As such, we will look at as many different odds and angles as possible, dealing only with sites that are legal in at least one US state.
Overall odds of a championship victory in 2022
Rather than getting into the nitty gritty of odds for individual games and face-offs right away, let’s look at what sport betting sites see as WVU’s prospects of becoming the 2022 College Football National Champion, a feat which it has yet to achieve since its first season played all the way back in 1891.
As you might expect, the track record of the Mountaineers suggests that they are something of a long shot for the championship, with BetMGM currently pegging this as a 200 to 1 likelihood.
This puts them on the same page as the likes of Virginia Tech, USC, Wisconsin and others. The current favorites on this site are Georgia, followed closely by Alabama and Ohio State.
Of course with a number of other bookmakers across the country and the world also offering odds on the outcome of the championship, there is no need to take BetMGM’s somewhat pessimistic outlook as gospel.
A more positive position is held by Betfair, for example, where the Mountaineers have a 90 to 1 chance of glory. Ok, this is still quite a long way from likely, but it demonstrates that there is not always agreement in the competitive arena of sports betting.
It is also worth pointing out that not all bookmakers, whether online or land-based, take wagers on every team in cases like this.
The reason may be that they simply do not think that the administrative costs of doing so will be worthwhile, since such obvious underdogs are unlikely to generate the volume of bets as the more dominant forces in college football.
They might also worry that if a small bet with long odds pays off, they will be left seriously out of pocket.
Conference-level and game-by-game odds
While its national track record might not be that compelling, WV does have more to shout about at a conference level. Even if its last major victory was a decade ago at this point, it has remained relevant ever since, and big things are expected this year, if everything falls into place.
DraftKings is not thoroughly convinced by this prospect, while BetMGM is a bit more bullish. It is of course still very early to make conference-level predictions, so it may be better to wait until a little later in the season before seeking out odds.
On a game-by-game basis, it is definitely worth tracking the odds closely and scouting out how betting sites assess and reassess the Mountaineers with each passing week.
For example, in the game against Oklahoma State on November 6, West Virginia are being given odds of 6 to 5 by BetMGM at the time of writing, while their rivals have 7 to 10 in their favor.
In summary, West Virginia is generally well covered in the world of sports betting sites, so long as you are looking for per-game or conference-level wagering. And of course no matter what the bookmakers and statisticians think, anything can happen on the field of play on the day.
