USFL Picks: Who to Bet in Spring Football
By Kreighton Rahn
Updated: June 15, 2023
USFL Championship Game 2023 Futures Odds
Birmingham Stallions (+210)
New Orleans Breakers (+340)
New Jersey Generals (+600)
Philadelphia Stars (+600)
Houston Gamblers (+750)
Pittsburgh Maulers (+1100)
Michigan Panthers (+1100)
Memphis Showboats (+1900)
The Birmingham Stallions picked up right where they left off last season, proving there is no Super Bowl hangover in the USFL. The reigning champs are once again dominating the league, compiling a 7-2 record and clinching a playoff berth (the only team to do so) through the first 9 weeks of the USFL season.
The Stallions lead the South division, and while they haven't clinched a division title, seeding doesn't mean a ton in a 4-team playoff format. That's especially true this season. The best teams in the USFL are all in the South. The Philadelphia Stars lead the North division with a 4-5 record. The other 3 teams in the North are all 3-6. Both by their records and the eye test, the South is where it's at.
Regardless of if the Stallions beat the Showboats in their final regular season game—the Stallions will play a member of the North division in the first round of the playoffs. Given the current state of the standings, it could be any of the four. Winning on Saturday won't change much about how the Stallions feel heading into the playoffs (which is optimistic and trophy-hungry). It will be interesting to see how the Stallions act in Week 10 as the only team in the entire league with nothing to play for. They'll be setting the precedent for how USFL teams should act in this scenario.
Showboats Getting Points at Home Against Stallions in Week 10
Even when they have nothing to play for, the most popular team in the USFL (by a longshot) is the Birmingham Stallions. The folks in Alabama don't have another professional option, and it's been very easy for them to latch onto the Stallions as their team, given the franchise's immediate success in the USFL reboot.
There are teams that exist across sports, think Yankees, Dodgers, Warriors, who have such a massive legion of fans, such a name recognition factor, and such starpower on their roster that they'll draw bets in nearly any situation. Now, we're not going as far as saying the Stallions have reached that level of notoriety, but they're certainly the closest thing the USFL has to a blueblood franchise.
Because fanatics are lined up around the block to get their money down on teams like this, it's typically wise to seek out spots to fade them. Week 10 in Memphis seems like a great time to fade Birmingham. Here's why.
The Showboats Already Have a Good Home-Field Advantage and are Getting 4 Points
4 points. That's the USFL spread today on FanDuel Sportsbook for Saturday afternoon's Stallions-Showboats game. The Showboats do not control their own destiny, but they are certainly playing for something this weekend.
Memphis needs a win and a Breakers loss in order to get into the postseason. The Breakers don't play until 4 p.m., while the Showboats play at 1. This means they won't be scoreboard-watching and can give this game their full effort. They probably would anyway because they're professional athletes, but sometimes human beings can lose interest in an endeavor once the outcome is rendered unreachable. It's nice to know this won't happen.
Getting 4 points at home, we like to think the Showboats will come out firing. The Memphis Showboats were in the original USFL back in the 80s but didn't get a team in the 2022 reboot of the league. They have a team now, though, in 2023s—38 years after the disbanding of the original Showboats.
They play at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium in Midtown Memphis—the home field of the Tigers and also the annual site of the Liberty Bowl.
Memphis has scored the 3rd-fewest points in the league this season, so for them firing probably means getting a couple of 3-and-outs in the first quarter. This is a better matchup than it initially seems for the Showboats' offense, though. While the Stallions haven't been allowing a lot of points, they certainly have a defense you can move the football on.
Birmingham has been getting chunked this year, both through the air and on the ground. They rank bottom-2 in yards allowed in 2023. The Stallions also don't force a lot of turnovers, so Cole Kelley may get the time to feel comfortable back there in the pocket.
The line opened at Stallions -4.5 but has since shifted a half point to Stallions -4. We love the Showboats +4, and we'll tell you why.
When All Signs Point to One Outcome, Bet the Other
Lots of stats are saying that the Stallions are the better team Saturday. That is true. The Stallions are the better team, but we believe that Memphis could win on this occasion and deserve a bet.
Betting against the league's best team will require debunking some of the common reasons no one wants to bet against them. So here goes:
The Stallions are on a 5-game win streak. Who wants to bet against that? True, but remember that the Stallions just played a remarkable game, blew Houston out of the water 38-15, and clinched a playoff berth. That was their goal all season long. They did it!
Now, with nothing left to play for, they're going to waltz into Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium and expect the Showboats to roll over.
Another reason many will refuse to fade Birmingham Saturday is that the Stallions already clobbered the Showboats once this season. These two teams met in Week 2, and Birmingham walked away 42-2 winners—their highest-scoring and most-lopsided game of the season.
This Week 2 result shouldn't matter because this is a completely different Showboats team than what was on that field in April. They have a different quarterback now, Cole Kelley. Kelley won the starting job midway through the season and has been performing admirably. The Showboats overcame an 0-3 start and actually won 5 games in a row.
For a while there, the Showboats had to be considered one of the strongest teams in the USFL. Their win streak came to an end last Saturday, though, when the Breakers dealt Memphis a 31-3 home loss to sink the Showboats to 5-4 and transfer the control of playoff destiny over to the Breakers.
Both teams are hot, but Birmingham has already reached a massive milestone this year while the Showboats are still hungry. We like the home team, with the points, in a game that should have a playoff-like atmosphere.
How the USFL's Rules Affect Betting Lines
Discussions on whether the USFL, or United States Football League, is a new sports entity—or merely a resurrection of the old USFL from the 1980s—have recently boomed in the media. Debate has reached such a fever pitch that lawsuits have been filed by old-school USFL team owners and publicists from back in the day.
Yet for the purposes of watching, betting, and cheering during Saturday and Sunday games, the USFL may as well be a brand-new league with no relationship to the logo from 40 years ago. After all, Marcus Dupree isn't suiting up for the New Orleans Breakers, and Herschel Walker is campaigning for a senate seat in his 60s, not scoring TDs for the New Jersey Generals as he once did.
FanDuel users who read the USFL's rulebook will be like paid sports-handicap subscribers, scrolling through pages of red tape to get to the "money pick." The new American football league has introduced a lot of clever, exciting, and state-of-the-art rules changes that could spice up the weekend gridiron, some of which could potentially be adopted by the National Football League. Gamblers, however, could be more interested in discovering what kind of clock-timing the USFL employs, a crucial angle for the pigskin bettor.
A 35-second play clock, which can be reduced to 25 seconds in various scenarios, will be used to time USFL games. That factor could help produce Over/Under "total points" lines that tend to be slightly higher than NFL total-points betting lines, as USFL teams can run more plays-from-scrimmage than the average NFL club over the course of 60 minutes.
The presence of "offensive guru" coaches like Todd Haley of the Tampa Bay Bandits can only spur more "Over" picks on USFL kickoffs, and hence drive sportsbook O/U lines upward on minor-league action.
Yet simultaneously, other bettors will hedge toward the "Under" on USFL total-points lines, hoping that the United States Football League will have a sloppy debut.
There’s a handful of other novel USFL rules for fans to note, including the option to kick for 1 after a touchdown, run a standard "2-point conversion" try for 2 points-after-TD, or back up to the 10-yard-line and try for 3 points-after-TD. Kickoffs will be from the 25-yard-line with no running start for the coverage squad, and USFL teams may also choose to run a long 4th-down conversion attempt after scoring a TD, for which a successful try results in retention of possession, an alternative to the low-percentage onside-kick try.
Overtime in the USFL will alternate standard 2-point conversion tries, with the first "turn winner" earning the victory. That's the closest thing an American football league has ever devised to soccer and hockey penalty-shot tiebreakers, and will surely bless and frustrate moneyline bettors by turns as tied games are won and lost in a matter of moments.
Moneyline Odds on USFL Games at FanDuel
Similar to other football leagues, USFL moneyline odds promise a percentage payoff when a gambler’s chosen team wins the game in regulation or in overtime. A USFL favorite’s odds are posted with a “-” symbol as in the moneyline (-200). Underdogs are marked with a “+,” as in an ML of (+350). The money payoff is calculated differently in the favorite and underdog markets, but always with $100 bills as the basic multiplier.
For example, the favorite's odds of (-200) mean that for every $200 bet on the team to win that week, the house will pay out $100 if the expected outcome comes to fruition.
The odds on the underdog side represent the amount paid out on one $100 bet if the team wins. For instance, (+350) equals a $350 payout on a $100 bet, and a win with (+1000) represents a money payout of $1000 on the same USFL betting risk.
The USFL and Point Spread Betting
Point-spread gambling works by “spotting” points to the underdog and “taking” points away from the favorite prior to kickoff. For instance, if the New Jersey Generals are a (-10) point spread favorite, the team must win by at least 11 points to “cover the spread” and win a bet against the point spread.
For those whose hometown team is a heavy favorite or long-shot underdog on a given weekend, point-spread betting can be a refuge. A 2-touchdown favorite won’t pay off very much with a moneyline betting victory, but a (-14) favorite that covers the spread pays off at close to a 1-to-1 bet.
Picking a USFL underdog to “cover” a 14-point spread means you’re really just hoping for a close contest. Your team can lose the game by 13 points and still cover. When the spread is matched exactly by the outcome of a USFL game, such as the New Jersey Generals (-8) beating the Philadelphia Stars (+8) by exactly 8 points, wagers are returned in a result called a “push.”
The brief revival of the XFL in 2020 was accompanied by some of the least-accurate point spreads found at any time in the COVID-19 era. Based on pure analysis of size, track speed, NCAA, and Varsity statistics, Las Vegas bookmakers placed very wide point spreads on XFL games as early as Week 1 and Week 2 of the league's reboot, such as giving the talented St. Louis Battlehawks more than 10 points against favored Dallas.
There's no such thing as a "2-touchdown underdog" when new sports franchises are playing each other for the very first time, a lesson odds-makers learned the hard way when gamblers cleaned up on the XFL in opening weeks.
Futures Odds, Prop Bets, and Over/Under Lines on the USFL
Bettors can find “futures” odds on league champions during the USFL season’s training camp, during preseason, and even from one week to the next during the regular season and playoffs. Wagers can be found on a favorite to win the USFL title at 5-to-1, or bettors can roll the dice with an underdog to win at closer to 50-to-1. Either way, long-term USFL betting sharks get to spend a season cheering for their football bet (or bets) just as season ticket-holders do. USFL futures bets are often expressed in “moneyline” form, meaning that 9-to-1 = (+900) when it comes to the betting outcome.
USFL and other American football prop bets refer to "propositions" posed to FanDuel users by the sportsbook, such an O/U line on a QB's number of passing TDs, or whether a North or South division USFL team will win the next summer's championship.
Point-total, or Over/Under, bets collapse a pair of USFL opponents into a single market and ask how many overall points will be scored in the game. Each “O/U,” or over/under bet, has 2 components. The over/under line is a number with no math symbols, no bells, and whistles. Just (45) or (51.5) (with the “.5” fraction blocking a potential push, since football teams can’t score half-points) or maybe (55) if a pair of high-scoring teams are planning to have a field day on the gridiron. The payoff odds are next to the O/U number and again usually set around 1-to-1 risk and reward. Whole-number O/U lines such as (42) are “pushed” when final scores tally the O/U exactly.
If teams are tied 21-21 going into OT, a scoreless period results in a push on the O/U of (42) points, while a score of any kind by either club results in a win for a wager on the “Over” side of the betting market.