The NFL has long since supplanted baseball as "America's sport" and for good reason when considering NFL and College football teams play once weekly which in the end lends credence to the saying of "absence makes the heart grow fonder", however, in the big picture one of the predominate reasons for the popularity of football centers around how easy it is to understand the mechanics of wagering on football.

Following are three considerations to ponder when wagering on the NFL that can help you consistently beat the books:

1) Do not over analyze last week's performance in terms of a good outing or a bad outing by any individual team, instead look at how that team has performed over the previous four or five weeks. Keep in mind that college football differs from professional football in the maturity level of the players involved, meaning that much more value must be assigned to the home team in a college football game than to a professional team playing at home.

2) Shop around for the best betting line available to you, this is especially important in games in which "key numbers" come into play. Key numbers are called as such because the final margin of victory often lands on these numbers, for example 3, 7, 10, 13, and 14 are the most common margin of victory numbers in both college and professional football. The reason why has to do with the way a team scores, 3 is a field goal, 7 is a touchdown with a kicked point after and so forth. Keep in mind that there is big difference in betting on or against a team taking or laying 2 ½ points versus taking or laying 3 or 3 ½ points and so on.

3) Injuries are one of the most over-rated statistics in both the NFL and college football game, the exception to this is if the injury is to the starting quarterback or if the current injury is part of a "cluster injury", a cluster injury means that a team is now short two or more starting offensive or defensive linemen or is now short two or more offensive or defensive backs. Generally speaking, the betting public over reacts to news of an injury and quite often this over reaction causes a line move that is totally unjustified in terms of the importance of the injury versus the adjustment to the posted point spread, this creates at times a lot of "value", look to exploit the line by taking the side with the injury.