re: Bama Spread down to -2. What is going on?

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It means the betting public started putting way more $$$ on A&M so they keep adjusting the spread down so that they have their traditional 50/50 allocation so that they always make the house rake and never lose money.

Note that works great for small bets but a whale like Mattress Mack can always come in and jump on a line and make the house lose money regardless if the outcome goes his way.

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This has become such a common response to betting line questions that a lot of people that don’t even follow sports books or betting lines have started to repeat and believe it. Vegas doesn’t move lines to get even action and the general betting public has very little (if any) affect on it in most circumstances… public win/loss trends, over the long term, are going to be about 50%, which is what the book wants. Individual game results on public bets don’t matter. Line movement is much more indicative of sharp betting, regardless of the value of those bets. A pool of public wagers @ $100k has less influence on a line than a single wager by an account marked as sharp @ $10k.

Lines move based on efficiency and value. If the book strictly wanted even money on either side of a bet, they would end up with extremely inefficient lines by kickoff. Betting limits increase the closer a game gets to kick because the book has a better idea of value and circumstance. They would be exposing themselves to inefficient lines at the highest possible limits if they were simply trying to balance the wagers, and sharps would eat them alive right before the game went live.

In some cases… during highly wagered events like the Super Bowl e.g., you will see a book balance their value more than usual, but that’s because the sheer volume of public wagers is much higher than normal.

TLDR: Books don’t move lines to balance public action, they do it to limit exposure and counter trends from serious bettors… professionals. They don’t care about public money because the value is natural.