College Football Championship Futures Odds
By Loot, NCAA Football Handicapper, Lootmeister.com
The most-known and utilized college football futures bet is to wager on which team will win the National Championship--the whole kit and caboodle. This bet has a lot of appeal. The teams will be listed with their corresponding odds and you pick as many teams as you want. Some like the more heavily-favored teams--the top candidates to win the title. Others prefer to take a stab in the dark with a team they feel will surprise people. Both approaches have paid dividends over the years.
The odds are pretty easy to understand. Understanding NCAA football futures odds as a whole is a little tricky, but these bets are usually expressed in the fractional form, like the following...
Odds to Win the 2014-2015 College Football FBS Championship
Florida State 4/1
Alabama 6/1
Oregon 13/2
TCU 200/1
Above you see an incomplete listing of teams to win the championship, with the top three favorites and a longshot in the mix. Florida State and Alabama at 4/1 and 6/1 respectively, is easy enough to understand--you would get 4 or 6 for every 1 you bet. Oregon at 13/2 is the same as 6-and-a-half to one, meaning they are slightly less-favored than Alabama. TCU at 200/1 would be a monstrous upset, paying $1000 on just a $5 bet.
And don’t laugh. That stuff can happen. In the 2013-14 season, a fan made a ton of headlines after he bet $100 on Auburn before the season at 500/1, with Auburn getting to the title game, which would have paid off a whopping 50K. If he were smart, he would have hedged the bet and guaranteed himself a profit, but he left his 500/1 shot go unprotected and came up agonizingly short. But the spirit of the point remains the same--this can be a gold mine for those who have the nerve to bet on teams that virtually no one is projecting will make it.
That’s a major upside of college football futures on who will win the championship. They allow enterprising bettors to use their vision of the game. Maybe you’re able to sense when a team will have a special season and these bets allow to capitalize on that, as opposed to betting against-the-spread of a single game where anything can happen.
In addition to the financial possibilities, these are bets that really give the bettor a ton of mileage off their wagering dollar. You can plunk down a couple bucks and have a bet that lasts quite a while, at least to the point where the team is still in the title picture. These bets can be made in the preseason, meaning you have a long-lasting stake in the team that can last all season long in the right situations.
This is vastly different form of betting than the standard type of college football wagering. Usually, we bet on a single game and it’s usually against the spread. And make no mistake, there are going to be a ton of good spots to make those kinds of more standard wagers. But when betting a team to win the title, it taps into a different set of predictive abilities. It allows you to utilize your understanding of the “big picture” and how things will shake out in the end. You’re not sweating every detail like in a regular bet on a single game. You count more on a purer understanding of the game--simply on whether or not they will make it to the top of the pile. Some find a lot of appeal in these more organic forms of wagering.
Timing is also important. When betting on a team that a lot of people are predicting will make it, the odds aren’t going to be very tasty, whether betting in the preseason or during the season. With longshots, the best move may be to get an early jump on the tasty odds, before everyone else gets hip to how good they are and drives the price down.
Also remember to rely on the more trusted books in the business. You don’t want to make bets on the future when the sportsbook might not be there in the future. Two safe places who are long tenured in the offshore sportsbook industry are BetOnline and Bovada. In any event, betting on who will win the college football championship offers a lot of upside to bettors--providing financial potential and long-lasting entertainment value. If you never made one before, they are certainly worth trying.
