College football: Six betting storylines ahead of 2024 season

The betting public has been increasingly risky ahead of the first season with a 12-team College Football Playoff. For months, it has been firing on long shots to not only make the expanded field but also, in some cases, to win the national championship.

• On July 24, a bettor in North Carolina with Caesars Sportsbook placed a $200 wager on Army to win the national championship at 5,000-1 odds, a bet that would net $1 million.

• DraftKings reported taking a $100 wager on Kent State to win the national title at 10,000-1, another bet that would net $1 million, but may be better served as a gag gift. The Golden Flashes, who went 1-11 last season, are picked to finish last in the MAC again.

• NC State, South Florida, Boise State, Kansas and Colorado are among the underdogs that also have received increased support from the always-savvy betting public this offseason.

“You would never get a bet like that in years past. It’s a bunch of teams that you’d never get money on,” veteran Las Vegas bookmaker Ed Salmons of the SuperBook said. “We got 200 bucks on South Florida.”

The five highest-ranked conference champions and the next seven highest-ranked teams will qualify for the College Football Playoff. Six teams are odds-on favorites to make the playoff, according to ESPN BET: Ohio State (-650), Georgia (-600), Oregon (-300), Texas (-240), Penn State (-150) and Alabama (-105).

“The handle and the amount of tickets that we’re writing has definitely been way better than I thought,” Salmons said. “I think the new format has really opened people’s eyes. And the public right now believes that a lot more teams can win given there’s more teams in the playoff. With the two teams and four teams, it had kind of grown stale. This year definitely has changed things.”

As a season of change for college football prepares to kick off, here’s a look at some notable betting storylines:

The 12-team playoff and conference realignment adjusting futures

College football has seen enormous paradigm shifts in recent seasons, but none will compare to the fundamental changes in structure for this coming season after massive conference realignment and the expansion of the College Football Playoff to 12 teams. For sportsbooks, it’s affecting how they make future lines and creating opportunities for more extensive handle.

“With the expanded College Football Playoff format, setting odds is more nuanced than in previous years,” ESPN BET head of sportsbooks Patrick Jay told ESPN. “It’s a bit more of an art than science now, as we try to predict how the committee will gauge teams’ résumés while balancing the fact that the top four ranked conference champions will fill the top four seeds no matter their record, meaning some of those spots may be in flux until late season conference title games.”

Florida State (35-1), for example, who was infamously snubbed from the CFP after going undefeated and winning the ACC last season, would have easily made the playoff under the current criteria and, in turn, ranks in the top 10 for national championship futures at ESPN BET.

Besides the odds to win it all, the expanded CFP gives previously borderline teams a chance to get into the tournament even if they don’t win their conference, and the odds on other futures are reflecting that. Penn State (-150) and Ole Miss (-135), who have never made the playoff, currently show very favorable odds to be in this year’s edition, and they are better than those of perennial contenders Alabama (-105) and Michigan (+140).

DraftKings director of sportsbook operations Johnny Avello estimates that Penn State could have been in two or three of the last five playoffs under the current format. “We’ve had to look over everything a little bit differently and adjust the odds for those teams that we believe can get in,” he said.

As a result, many teams that would have had little to no chance of making the CFP in previous years are seeing elevated action ahead of this season: Avello says that Colorado (+1500), Iowa (+600) and Nebraska (+900) are some DraftKings’ biggest liabilities in the “To Make the Playoff” market.

It speaks to bettors’ willingness to take a chance on these outsiders.

“For us, this should be a really huge handle,” Avello said. “We’ve had this for a couple of months now and it’s writing good business.”

Travel costs

Circadian rhythm — the body’s internal clock — and its impact on athletic performance will be tested more often this season.

Over the past three seasons, there were 11 games between Power 5 teams (including Notre Dame) from the Pacific and Eastern time zones. This season, thanks to conference realignment, there will be 32 such matchups.

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Academic studies indicate peak athletic performance often occurs late in the afternoon, meaning teams from the Pacific Time Zone could have an edge when playing a primetime kickoff out East. Many kickoff times have not been set as of mid-August, but misaligned circadian clocks and jet lag will have an impact regardless, says Karyn Esser, a physiologist at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, who studies the circadian clock.

“Our underlying biology has a time of day pattern that is ‘run’ by these circadian clocks found within our cells,” Esser explained in an email to ESPN. “These changes in our biology will impact muscle strength, motivation, metabolic efficiency, etc.”

A 1997 study from Stanford University looked at data from 25 seasons in the NFL, where cross-continent matchups are more frequent. The study found West Coast teams playing East Coast teams in games that kicked off at 9 p.m. ET exceeded expectations, including those of the betting market. “West Coast teams win more often and by more points per game than [East Coast] teams,” the study states. “West Coast teams are performing significantly better than is predicted by the Las Vegas odds.”

“There will be a performance impact due to jet lag and circadian clock misalignment,” Esser added.

“Traveling so your internal clock is not aligned with the time of your new environment is different, and I would say that will be a problem.”

It will be up to oddsmakers and bettors to decide exactly how big of a problem jet lag and misaligned body clocks will be. “I think there will probably be some overreaction to the travel and there will end up being value on the road team,” Salmons said.

Heisman odds indicate wide-open race

In mid-July, Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel made news by taking the lead in the preseason Heisman race, surpassing Georgia’s Carson Beck (+800) and Texas’ Quinn Ewers (+1000) on the odds board. At the time, Gabriel showed +750 and has since moved down to +700, per ESPN BET odds.

Even with the movement, Gabriel is set to be the longest preseason Heisman favorite in the last 15 years, with TCU’s Trevone Boykin representing the previous longest odds over that span at +625 in 2015.

The lack of a clear-cut favorite in the sportsbooks’ view is also creating a lack of consensus among bettors, which is ideal for the books’ liability.

“Gabriel, Beck, [Jalen] Milroe, Ewers, even Jaxson Dart all have pretty similar betting, like right around the same amount of money,” BetMGM trading manager Christian Cipollini told ESPN. “Gabriel’s taking the most as the favorite but not by a ton. They’re all pretty similar, so that’s great for the book, we like getting action on someone every which way.”

Those five quarterbacks, plus Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders (+3500), represent the top six most-bet candidates in ESPN BET’s Heisman futures market, having each garnered between 6% and 9% of the bets. Gabriel has the most handle at 9%, while Milroe and Dart each have 8%.

Another name to watch is Kansas State Wildcats Avery Johnson (+2500), who has attracted a leading 9% of the money at DraftKings and 6.2% of the wagers at BetMGM, good for fifth.

Cipollini notes that the one danger for the sportsbook is the possibility of a popular underdog winning the coveted award, as even a relatively small number of bets could create liability because of the elevated odds.

In this case, it’s Colorado two-way superstar Travis Hunter (+5000), who ranks in the top 10 for bet percentage at ESPN BET, BetMGM and FanDuel. FanDuel reports that the two-way star has 6% of the tickets and 9% of the handle to rank third among all Heisman candidates.

The overall parity in Heisman future odds makes sense given recent history because, while one of the top three preseason favorites has won the award in the past three seasons, the actual favorite has not won it since Marcus Mariota in 2014. Furthermore, 10 of the past 15 winners were 25-1 or longer before the season, while six of the last 15 were at least 100-1 or not listed in the preseason, per ESPN Stats & Information.

‘Zero’ interest in Michigan; Saban-less Alabama still a popular bet

Joey Feazel, Caesars Sportsbook’s lead college football oddsmaker, had to keep scrolling down the list, when asked where Michigan ranked among the teams that have attracted the most bets to win the national championship.

Michigan had 13 players selected in the NFL draft, including quarterback J.J. McCarthy, and coach Jim Harbaugh also departed for the pros. The personnel losses combined with a schedule considered one of the nation’s toughest has limited the betting interest on the Wolverines.

“So far, we’ve seen little to no interest on Michigan,” Feazel said.

The Wolverines have odds upward of 40-1 to win the national title at some sportsbooks, the longest preseason odds for a defending national champion since LSU in 2020. Michigan’s win total is 8.5, the lowest for any defending champion since Auburn (6.5) in 2011, according to betting odds archive SportsOddsHistory.com.

“Zero interest on them,” Salmons said. “We’ve got a hundred bucks on them and have them at 40-1. Everyone’s busy betting Ole Miss.”

While interest in the Wolverines at sportsbooks is slim, the betting public hasn’t given up on Alabama, another perennial power that saw its coach depart in the offseason. Legend Nick Saban retired from Alabama and an SEC-high 39 players transferred. Even so, Salmons said the Crimson Tide have attracted the second-most wagers to win the national championship, behind only Texas, at the SuperBook.

Alabama’s season win total is sitting at 9.5, its lowest since 2015, and the Tide are 15-1 to win the national championship, their longest preseason odds since 2008, Saban’s second season. “I would be shocked if they essentially don’t take what they’ve done and continue it, if not even better,” Salmons said of Alabama.

Teams that have attracted the most money to win the national championship

[at the SuperBook at Westgate Las Vegas]
1. Georgia
2. Ole Miss
3. LSU
4. Miami
5. Texas A&M

Regression watch: LSU, USC overs and Iowa unders

LSU overs were among the best bets of 2023

With Heisman quarterback Jayden Daniels under center and one of the SEC’s shakiest defenses, 12 of the Tigers’ 13 games went over the total by an average margin of 11.3 points per contest. Only one other team in the last 10 seasons — the 2014 national champion Ohio State Buckeyes — has went over the total 12 times during a single campaign, and it took the Buckeyes 15 games to do it.

USC, with the same formula as LSU — a prolific quarterback in Caleb Williams and a suspect defense — went over the total in 10 of its 13 games, which averaged 76.2 total points. Since coach Lincoln Riley’s arrival in 2022, 21 of the Trojans’ 27 games have gone over the total, and 63.6% of his games (56-32-1 over/under) as a head coach have gone over.

But potential for regression looms in Baton Rouge and Southern Cal. Daniels and Williams are gone to the NFL, and both LSU and USC are hoping changes at defensive coordinator spark improvement. There is also historical precedent that shows that the betting market typically catches up to teams that have extreme seasons against the odds. During a 10-year stretch, from 2012 through the 2022 season, teams that went over the total by more than 10 points per game during one campaign combined to produce 110 overs and 139 unders in their following seasons, according to TeamRankings.com’s database.

LSU and USC play in a Week 1 season opener in Las Vegas. The total is 62.5.

“I would say last year it would’ve been 69.5, maybe 70,” Joey Feazel, college football oddsmaker for Caesars Sportsbook, said.

Iowa unders

The average over/under on Iowa games last season was 35.0, three points lower than any other team in any season since 2000, according to ESPN Stats & Information. The team with the second-lowest average total over a season? The 2022 Hawkeyes.

Twice last year, the totals on Iowa games were in the 20s, including a record-low 25.5 against Nebraska Cornhuskers in November.

The totals were indeed historic, yet not low enough. Twelve of Iowa’s 14 games last season went under the total. Only four other teams have had at least 12 games go under the total in a season since 2000 (Kentucky Wildcats in 2022, North Texas Mean Green in 2018, Ohio Bobcats in 2016, and San Diego State Aztecs in 2014).

Games involving Iowa last season averaged 30.2 points combined, the second lowest since 2000, behind Missouri Tigers in 2015 (29.8 points per game).

The Hawkeyes switched out offensive coordinators, bringing in former Western Michigan coach Tim Lester for needed spark. Iowa veteran coach Kirk Ferentz has said though that the offensive system will continue to complement the Hawkeyes’ defense, which is expected to be one of the nation’s top units.

Sportsbook Circa Sports is offering a unique prop bet on Iowa — Will the Hawkeyes average 25 points per game this season? The “Yes” is -110 and the “No” is -110.