What Vegas Thinks About 2021 College Football

Before each new college football season, everyone pays rapt attention to all the pundits providing their deep analysis of every scenario possible that might lead a team to the playoff and, ultimately, to the championship of college football. They inform us of the roadblocks Michigan has to overcome, take a deep dive into the tight races in the PAC 10, tell us they think Texas is really back now (or not), compare and contrast the dominant offenses of the Big 12 to the dominant defenses of the SEC, and on and on.

In the end what they give us is their feelings, their guesses.

But you know who makes predictions and puts their money where their mouth is? Vegas oddsmakers.

Before each season, Vegas tells us who is going to win the national championship, who is going to make the playoffs and who is going to win each conference. They do it by telling us how many games each team is likely to win. Not which games they’ll win, but how many. I mean, they can’t do all the work for us!

The sports books in Vegas released their college football future odds in January and began taking bets on their lines. Who did they “favor” to win the national championship?

Alabama at +280 odds (a little less than 3/1).

Since some may not be as familiar with futures betting odds as others, in this article we’ll refer to American odds which is most commonly used for Moneyline bets where the bettor is simply trying to pick the winner. For example, recently odds makers had the visiting Boston Red Sox as +105 underdogs versus the Yankees (-115).  A bet of $100 on the Sox would payout $205 (the original bet of $100 plus a $105 profit) if they won. The same $100 bet on the winning Yankees would only payout $187 (the original bet of $100 plus an $87 profit). For more information on futures betting odds and how they work, read this.

 

 

Obviously, that means Alabama is favored to be one of the four playoff participants. Who did Vegas favor to also make the playoffs?

Ohio State, Clemson and Oklahoma.

Clemson is +300 to win it all with Ohio State right behind at +500. Oklahoma is +800 (which happens to be the same as UGA).

If you look at all of the futures odds Vegas has put out on this season’s college football, you can see that Clemson actually has the highest chance to make the playoffs. The oddsmakers say that Clemson is a lock to win the ACC championship. You’d have to bet $835 to win $100 if you placed a bet that Clemson will win the ACC.  And Vegas has set Clemson’s regular season win total at 11 ½.

These odds are far higher than those of any of the other teams. You could argue that means Clemson is the best overall team…or that their ACC opposition is not all that good.  All these factors indicate that Vegas thinks Clemson has the best shot to make the playoffs.

The oddsmakers don’t stop there. They predict (and take bets on) how many games each team will win.

For example, Notre Dame is predicted to win nine games. You can bet that they will win more but you have to risk $100 to win $71. Or you can bet they’ll win less than nine games and you can make $110 on your $100 bet. Meaning Vegas thinks it’s a lot more likely the Irish will win more than nine games than less…but they really think the Irish will only win nine games which would mean Vegas wins all of the bets made on the over/under.

So which three games does Vegas think Notre Dame will lose? Look at the schedule and figure it out (our guess is at Wisconsin, North Carolina and Cincinnati).

Want to know what Vegas thinks about your team and each major conference championship? Read on and you get all that plus our take on where we think Vegas has got it all wrong (more on Notre Dame there)!