Over the past few weeks, I have taken you on a journey across the college football preseason landscape. I have reflected back on the data from 2025 and conducted a detailed analysis of the schedule for the Michigan State Spartans. I have analyzed the races in the Big Ten, the rest of the Power Four, and in the Group of Five. Most recently, I have made some predictions regarding the 12-team college football playoffs.
In the first seven installments of this series, I have discussed a multitude of odds that I have generated using a simulation of the full college football season. In today’s final installment of our college football preview, we will explore whether or not these odds might just help us win a bit of money.
That’s right, it’s time to officially kickoff the 2025 edition of Dr. Green and White’s Bad Betting Advice.
The Big Picture
The results of my full season simulation provide a variety of odds that can be compared to common betting lines available from any common sports book. These include the odds to win a division and/or qualify for a conference championship game, the odds to win the conference, make the playoffs, and win the National Championship.
Table 1 below summarizes the odds for all of these events for the preseason top 25 according to the consensus of the preseason publications.
Table 1 includes the preseason rank and strength of schedule (and SoS rank) for each team. It then lists the odds for each event based on my simulation results. The middle of the table shows the Draft Kings money line odds for each of those bets. I have converted those money lines to the equivalent odds so that they can be easily compared to the simulation odds.
Finally, the right side of the table gives the return on investment (ROI) for each potential bet of $100, assuming the odds from my simulation are the true odds. I have shaded each potential bet with a positive ROI as green.
As expected, the overall odds to win the national title correlate closely with the preseason rankings. Preseason No. 1 Texas has the best odds to win the National Championship (10.2%), followed by No. 2 Penn State (8.8%), No. 3 Ohio State (8.3%), No. 4 Alabama (7.9%), No. 5 Georgia (6.8%), and No. 6 Notre Dame (5.8%).
Note that the playoff odds for the teams in the top 10 all hover around 50%. This suggests that roughly half of these highly ranked teams in the preseason will actually make the college football playoffs. Some of these teams will likely be worse than expected, while others will wind up taking one too many losses. In my disruptive scenario, No. 4 Alabama (9-3) and No. 9 LSU (8-4) both wind up on the outside looking in.
Note that around two-thirds of these bets have a negative ROI. This is not surprising, as the folks in Las Vegas are experts at setting the line just above the real odds such that the house always wins.
But, there are a few teams that have a positive ROI for at least one of three events captured in this table. Miami, Florida, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Arizona State, and Illinois all stand out as teams with positive ROIs in all three categories.
Suggested Conference and Division Champion Bets
The information in Table 1 is a just a small sample of the potential bets that my simulation generates. It is also possible to estimate which specific bets look the most promising (have the highest ROI) in several different categories.
Table 2 below lists the top 25 highest ROI wagers for teams that either win the conference championship or make the championship game.
In general, this table lists high risk, high reward bets for teams with odds below 5%. But there are a few potential bets that catch me eye. In general, my analysis is more bullish on Oklahoma in the SEC, both to make the conference championship game (ROI = $69.75) and to win it ($93.38).
I am also intrigued by the odds and ROI for Illinois to make the Big Ten Championship Game (15% and $49.66) and for BYU to make the Big 12 Championship Game (17% and $34.93)
That said, the expected value of correct picks in this table is only 1.8. So, most likely only one or two picks out of this top 25 will hit this year.
Playoffs and National Title Bets
Table 1 above summarized some of the returns on investment for National Title wagers. Table 3 below gives the top 25 list of the most promising bets for teams to either make the playoffs or to win the whole thing.
Similar to Table 3, there are a lot of high risk and high reward picks on this table. The expected value of correct picks in the top 25 is a little better than in Table 2. The table above should yield between two and three correct predictions (2.4).
The picks that stick out to me are once again the ones with slightly higher odds. A wager on Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Wisconsin or BYU to make the playoffs looks reasonable. Last year, both SMU and Indiana has positive ROIs to make the playoffs, and both of those bets hit.
Win Total (Over/Under) Bets
A lower risk approach lies in betting on season win totals. Table 4 below summarizes the top 25 best over/under win total bets on the board according to my computer.
The money lines and returns on investment are lower for these bets, but the odds are also much better than any of the potential wagers discussed thus far. The expected value for correct wagers in this table is 15.4, so a respectable number of these bets should work out.
The top picks on the board this year are to take the over on Wake Forest (4.5 wins) and Florida Atlantic (4.5) and to take the under on Ball State (3.5), Georgia (9.5) and Florida International (5.5). I should also point out that my analysis also suggests take the under on Michigan State to win 5.5 games, but let’s not think about that too much right now.
As an aside, I would also like to point out how close the expected wins totals from my simulation compare to the adjusted over/under totals from DraftKings. By “adjusted,” I mean that I used the money line data to estimate fractional win totals. Figure 1 below shows this comparison.
By simply using preseason rankings, I was able to predict the win totals with a high level of accuracy. The standard deviation is just 0.48 and only six win totals out of 136 are over one game. Note that the farther away a data point is from the line, the larger the ROI in Table 4 above.
Most Promising Big Ten Bets
For Big Ten fans, it is reasonable to wonder which bets involving Big Ten teams have the best potential payback. Table 5 below provides my computer’s answer to that question.
Based on Table 5, my analysis suggests that Wisconsin, Illinois, and perhaps Michigan might be slightly undervalued by Vegas. All three teams appear multiple times in the table for bets to make the Big Ten title game, win the conference, make the playoffs, or hit the over on wins.
Table 5 also suggests that Michigan State, Ohio State, and Oregon might be slightly overvalued by the oddsmakers in Las Vegas. My analysis suggests to take the under on wins for all three teams.
In a few other cases, Table 5 is giving a mixed message. For example, for Iowa, USC, and Northwestern, my analysis recommends taking the under on wins, but to also bet on those teams to either win the conference or make the playoffs.
Bettor Beware
As I put a bow onto this piece and on this preseason analysis series, I feel obligated to give the following warning. Despite the fact that this entire piece centers on betting, I do not personally bet on sports. While I find the mathematics behind betting lines fascinating, but my interest ends there.
I personally view this analysis to be for entertainment only. I will track the performance of these picks over the season, but I mostly just find this data interesting.
As for the accuracy of these picks, I do believe the odds to be correct. However, the returns on investment listed make the assumption that the preseason rankings I used in my analysis from Phil Steele, Lindy’s, Athlon, SP+, and ESPN are on average slightly more accurate than the preseason rankings used by the experts in Las Vegas. This may or may not end up being true.
If you are a serious bettor, I would recommend using this information as a mere piece of your overall analysis. If you have a few bets in mind already and are looking for confirmation, I think that the data above may prove useful
In any event, the dawn of the next college football season is nearly upon us. Welcome back, college football, we have missed you.