If the College Football Playoffs were to start right now, these would be the betting odds you would be working with.
In the most recent top four of the college football playoffs we have Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Mississippi State in that order. That would pin Alabama and Mississippi State in a rematch and Oregon and FSU in a corners-of-America matchup. But what you degenerates really want to know is how you can make money on it.
RJ Bell has your projected betting odds if the first-ever playoff was to start right now.
So, Alabama would be favored by 5.5 points over Mississippi State after beating the Bulldogs 25-20 on Saturday. While that doesn’t seem like much, Alabama led by 19 points before Mississippi State made somewhat of a comeback. But the game was never really in doubt, and Alabama won handedly. If you ask me, 5.5 is pretty low. I would take Alabama.
Moving on to Oregon giving 2.5 points to Florida State. This one is tough. First, you have a hard-to-read FSU squad going against a perennial almost-but-not-quite Ducks team.
The biggest issue here is the location of the game. The college football playoffs will be played on a neutral field based on a rotation of bowl games. This year, the two games are the Rose Bowl (Southern California) and the Sugar Bowl (New Orleans).
I haven’t been able to find any information on how specifically the committee will decide which game will be played where, but one could assume they would place the two SEC schools in New Orleans for practical reasons (and because the SEC controls everything, including the Illuminati).
That forces FSU onto a six-hour plane ride to California. Typically, it’s the West-to-East trips that screw with teams and impact betting odds, but Tallanasty-to-Pasadena is no trip to sneeze at–especially for college kids not used to traveling that far for football games. It’s hard to know if Vegas considered this in its projections, or if they simply think Oregon is 2.5 points better discounting home-field advantage for either school.
Still, playing on the West Coast is an advantage for the Ducks, even if it’s not worth their full home field advantage. Home-field is typically valued at three points in the NFL or the highest level of college football, but some fields have an historically larger advantage because of the size, tradition and rowdiness of differing fan bases (For example, Western Kentucky probably doesn’t have a comparable home field advantage to Ohio State).
But if, for the sake of this exercise, we figure the default three-point edge for Oregon in a Rose Bowl game against the ‘Noles, that’s still a half-point more than the projected 2.5 points. Again, if Vegas considered this in the projection, they see the two as even. If they didn’t, then an adjusted spread considering the trip might be closer to Oregon by 5.5 points. That’s too much.
I’m taking Alabama and FSU against these projections.
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