College Football Betting Simulator in Python

Greetings, dear readers! While I’m aware that my readership may not be vast, I wanted to take a moment to give you an update on a little project I just finished. Over the past few years, my friends and family have played a game during college football season: “If we each started the season with $3000, who would make the most money by betting on the games?” Of course, none of us actually want to bet $3000 dollars, so the game is simulated. Each player begins the season with $3000, and he or she chooses the games they would like to bet on, using betting lines provided by the Live Odds app.

The game is extremely fun, but it’s next to impossible to keep track of your own money each week – much less anyone else’s. The bets placed through the week over group text messages add up very quickly. I’ve always kept track of my wins and losses in a Google sheet, but I always dreamed of making an app we could all use to track our wins and losses and compare them to the other players.

While I still haven’t built that app, I’ve built a terminal program in Python that provides the framework, logic, and groundwork for a future app. You can find it on Github.

Since I’m most comfortable in Python, it made the most sense to build it with that. I’m still considering my options for building the actual app. I’ve considered using Node, HTML, CSS, etc., but I’ve also considered using a framework like Pynecone. We’ll see.

Either way, feel free to use my Python terminal app and iterate on it however you like. It uses the free CFBD API, which has great developer documentation and a strong discord group. I also created a JavaScript version of the terminal app that I’ll publish to Github soon.