If you sit down and talk to old-timers who have sports betting careers that can be measured in decades, or read old sports betting books, you'll inevitably start hearing or seeing some pearls of wisdom that have been hard gained through the years. Some of them might not hold up under scrutiny, but others would be very valuable if you were to spend the time to listen to them. The other day I was thinking about one such insight that I have heard or read a few times but never given much thought - that the teams that win almost always cover in the NFL. There are a lot of elements of that to consider and discuss, but before we do that let's look at whether it actually holds up this year. Here is the ATS record of the game winners in each week of the season:

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Week 1 - 15-1 ATS
Week 2 - 11-2-2 ATS
Week 3 - 13-3 ATS
Week 4 - 11-2 ATS
Week 5 - 11-2 ATS
Week 6 - 12-2 ATS
Week 7 - 11-3 ATS
Week 8 - 11-3 ATS
Week 9 - 10-4 ATS
Week 10 - 10-4 ATS
Week 11 - 11-4 ATS
Week 12 - 15-0-1 ATS
Week 13 - 13-2-1 ATS
Week 14 - 13-3 ATS

Overall - 167-35-4

So there it is - the team that has won the game has also covered the spread 82.7 percent of the time. That's a pretty impressively strong trend. But does it mean anything? Absolutely.

The first thing we have to remember is that an underdog that wins the game is always going to cover the spread. There have been 62 underdogs that have been outright winners so far this year. In each of those cases the insight is both true and self-evident. It's the rest of the games that are really interesting. When the favorites win the game, their ATS record is 105-35-4. In other words, when a favorite wins the game it also covers the spread 75 percent of the time.

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There is an obvious reason why this is the case, and one that is less obvious. First, because the NFL is fairly competitive from top to bottom you don't see really large spreads. You usually only see a couple of double-digits spreads a week at most, and most spreads are less than a touchdown. That means that there isn't a whole lot of room for a team to win the game while not covering the spread. In many cases where a favorite is in the lead but not yet covering the spread, the trailing team will take risks to try to score, and that often leads to mistakes and points for the leading team. That can lead to more covers.

So, what does this all mean? Well, there's a simple but powerful lesson here - just try to pick winners. We can often try to get too fancy, looking to be cute and pick out the teams that we think are good enough to win but not to cover. Though that happens occasionally - about 17 percent of the time - it clearly doesn't make a lot of sense to try to find those teams regularly. Next time you are struggling, or you find that your handicapping mindset is out of whack, just think of the numbers above. If you just concentrate on picking the team that is going to win the game and ignore the implications of the spread then you'll find it much simpler to think about, and you'll find yourself making clearer decisions.