Notable bets: College basketball tips off 'sharp bettors' paradise - ESPN

The busiest three weeks in sports betting begin now.

College basketball tips off Monday with a slate of more than 100 games. College football and the NFL continue with the NBA and NHL seasons both underway. Bookmakers are stretched thin, and savvy bettors know it.

The college basketball market in November is made up of primarily serious bettors, while the casual betting public is focused on football. Oddsmakers must keep up with more than 300 college basketball teams, many of which feature drastically different rosters for last season. Betting limits are smaller and lines are volatile, but the pros love it.

«It's the most challenging of the sports to book,» Adam Pullen, a longtime Las Vegas bookmaker with Caesars, said. «It's hard to keep up with every single team and know everything about every game. You're just trying to scrape by until we get to the conference season.

»College basketball is a sharp bettors' paradise."

Pullen said he's still making his team at Caesars the favorite to come out ahead on college hoops in November, but knows they have their work cut out for them.

November college basketball is so lucrative that betting groups will stop playing college football and the NFL altogether. They also ramp up their efforts get access to more sportsbook accounts.

Right Angle Sports, an influential betting syndicate commonly referred to by bookmakers as 'RAS', says it dedicates 14 people to college basketball, dividing the 362 teams among them. In contrast, sportsbooks may have just a handful of bookmakers responsible for college basketball.

On Sunday, New Jersey-based professional bettor Gadoon «Spanky» Kyrollos said on X, formerly known as Twitter, «Tomorrow the real craziness begins» and encouraged followers to