College Football Playoff Odds

Published 12/27/2024, before the quarterfinal round has begun.

Although the 12-team CFP has already started, here are the championship odds for each team using College Football Insiders data:

1. Oregon – 23.8%
2. Georgia – 16.0%
3. Boise State – 0.7%
4. Arizona State – 3.1%
5. Texas – 14.3%
6. Penn State – 8.2%
7. Notre Dame – 10.3%
8. Ohio State – 10.1%
9. Tennessee – 2.2%
10. Indiana – 3.8%
11. SMU – 5.2%
12. Clemson – 1.8%

A noticeable thing occurs when looking at seeds 3 and 4, Boise State and Arizona State, who earned byes into the quarterfinal round due to their conference championships but are nevertheless the two weakest teams in the playoff. Boise has almost no shot of winning, and Arizona State’s odds before the playoff were worse than two of the first-round road teams.

Because the bracket isn’t balanced like one normally assumes it would be (with the #1 seed being the best followed by the #2 seed and so on), there is a strong argument to make that being the #5 or #6 seed is actually better than being the #1 or #2 seed. Let’s compare the #1 seed with the #5 seed, remembering that we need to consider the playoff scenarios before the CFP started. #1 Oregon will play the winner of #8 Ohio State and #9 Tennessee (this is Ohio State) in the quarterfinals. #5 Texas plays #12 Clemson and, if it wins (it did), faces #4 Arizona State in the quarters. So, Oregon just has to win 1 game and Texas has to win 2 games to get to the semifinal round, but Texas arguably has the easier opponents.

Oregon is given a 59.5% chance of winning its Rose Bowl (quarterfinal) game and making the semis. Texas is given a 52.4% chance of winning both the first round and then the Peach Bowl game to make the semis. But, this was before the tournament began. Since that time, Oregon’s quarterfinal opponent was confirmed to be the tougher Ohio State, giving the Ducks a 55.4% chance of making the semis. This still favors Oregon’s path, but 55.4% vs. 52.4% is not a big difference.

To add further weight to the idea that Texas has an easier path to the CFP semifinals, let’s look at actual odds from the bettors. Texas was 13.5 point favorites vs. Clemson, corresponding to a 86.0% chance of winning. In the Longhorns’ Peach Bowl game against Arizona State, they again are 13.5 point favorites. Taking 0.86 * 0.86 gets us to 0.7396, or a 74.0% chance of Texas making the CFP semifinals. Oregon on the other hand is 2.5 point underdogs to Ohio State in the quarterfinal Rose Bowl game, giving the Ducks a 45.8% chance of advancing to the semifinal bowl game. Now, this isn’t a perfect comparison as we don’t exactly know what Oregon’s odds would be in Texas’ spot in the bracket and vice-versa, but Texas would have to be about 10 point favorites vs. Ohio State for it to be a wash for the Longhorns and Oregon would have to have been only about 7.5-point favorites in both games it would have played (Clemson/Arizona State). It’s doubtful that’s the case.

At the moment, the final 8 teams have the following odds of winning the CFP according to the website’s odds (which do differ noticeably from the market-based odds):

1. Oregon – 20.5%
2. Georgia – 14.2%
3. Boise State – 0.6%
4. Arizona State – 2.4%
5. Texas – 19.5%
6. Penn State – 13.4%
7. Notre Dame – 15.6%
8. Ohio State – 13.8%

FanDuel’s futures odds give the following implied predictions of winners¹:

1. Oregon – 14.8%
2. Georgia – 14.8%
3. Boise State – 0.8%
4. Arizona State – 1.1%
5. Texas – 22.8%
6. Penn State – 14.2%
7. Notre Dame – 10.1%
8. Ohio State – 21.5%

Texas and Ohio State are seen as the strongest teams, and Penn State, the #6 seed, despite not being the strongest team, is nearly equal money with Georgia and Oregon due to the Nittany Lions having an easier road through the quarters.

1. Calculated using the money-equivalent-bet method, where we presume the market is predicting a bet for any team has the same expected average cash out. Or, any of the FanDuel futures would be a comparable bet to all others were the winning percentages to work out in this way. I can think of no better way to derive winning percentages from market odds given that bookmaker’s take cuts (and thus you cannot just add all projected pay-outs and get it to equal 1.0). ↩︎