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Familiar teams highlight most-bet 2024 CFP futures
Georgia and Ohio State are the most bet-on teams entering the season, while Texas and Oregon are attracting betting action as well.
College football is undergoing quite a transformation this upcoming season.
In addition to the new College Football Playoff format, which has expanded to 12 teams from four last season, there has been a ton of movement among programs entering new conferences. The Big Ten? Well, it has 18 teams now, including Oregon, USC, Washington and UCLA. The Pac-12? It’s just Oregon State and Washington State – two teams left standing when the musical chairs of realignment stopped. Oklahoma and Texas are now in the loaded SEC, and Colorado and Utah have joined the Big 12.
There is a lot to sort through for bettors, but oddsmakers have made it clear that there are two teams atop the CFB Playoff pecking order as the season begins: Georgia and Ohio State. The Bulldogs are the consensus favorite at NCAAF sportsbooks at around +300, while Ohio State is as close as +325 at some books. At BetMGM, Ohio State has the most wagers (21%) and dollars wagered (28%) of any team to win the College Football Playoff, and also stands as the book’s biggest liability. The top eight teams on the odds board all hail from either the Big Ten or the SEC.
“In terms of bet count, it’s Georgia and Ohio State,” Seamus Magee, a trader at BetMGM said. “Georgia is a really good result for us right now, even with the second-most tickets taken [to win it all]. Ohio State wasn’t one big bet for the liability, just a lot of accumulation of action.”
But two teams a little further down the odds boards – both of which are in new conferences this season – are also generating some significant liability for bookmakers.
“Some of the bigger action that’s come in is on Texas and Oregon,” bet365 trading leader Aron Wattleworth said this week. “I think a lot of people are figuring it’s a good opportunity for those two teams. The one team that people in general seem to like is Oregon.”
Texas at +775 (8.8% of bets) and Oregon at +800 (6.1%) are the two teams with the next-best odds after Georgia and Ohio State, and also are Nos. 3 and 4 in terms of ticket count. New Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel (transfer from Oklahoma) is also the current favorite to win the Heisman Trophy at sportsbooks.
In terms of long shots, Wattleworth noted an outsized amount of action on Liberty at 500-1, an interesting team with a win total of 10.5 that never would’ve had a chance to make the playoff under the four-team format, but now has a path in with 12 entrants.
“Don’t really have a lot of lottery team action this year,” Wattleworth noted. “Tickets keep trickling in on Liberty at 500-1. We’ve also seen Over plays on their team total [of 10.5].”
The biggest bet on Liberty at DraftKings was a $100 wager at 500-1 odds that would pay $50,000.
One other notable longshot bet at DraftKings? One bettor put down $100 on the Kent State Golden Flashes to win it all at 10,000-1 odds. The bet would win $1 million, but it’s fair to say it’s a longshot, as the Golden Flashes went 1-11 last season and had a point differential of -239.
