College Football Playoff: Best bets for the First Round
Two favorites and two underdogs to back in the first-ever CFP opening round
Matt Russell is the creator of THE WINDOW, and former lead betting analyst at theScore. If there’s a bad beat to be had, Matt will find it. You can find him @mrussauthentic on X.
Ok, we’re doing it!
The first ever, first round of the College Football Playoff, with playoff games on home campus sites.
For all the frustration with how the bracket got built, there should be excitement, as we chart this territory for the first time.
Who will show up ready to play to the high-end of their range? Who will be overwhelmed?
Interestingly (and perhaps purposefully), there are no rest mismatches in the first round, as the four teams who played on Championship weekend face one another, leaving those who’ve been off for three weeks to clash with more rest than they’ve had all season.
(10) Indiana @ (7) Notre Dame (-7, 51)
Projected spread: Notre Dame -10.5
Opening line: Notre Dame -7.5
My early bet: Notre Dame -7.5If it wasn’t such a harsh result, Notre Dame’s loss to Northern Illinois in their home opener would have been a god send. Getting beat by a mid-level MAC team sent the Irish’s estimated market rating plummeting off of their preseason estimation as a 87/100 college football team. If you were able to ignore such an egregious loss, you were able to profit by backing Notre Dame, as they went 8-2 ATS the rest of the way, eventually getting back to their initial EMR of 87.
If Notre Dame’s season has gone full-circle - from the upset of the year on their home field to hosting a playoff game, Indiana’s season was a rocket ship. The Hoosiers opened the season with a win total of 5.5 and an EMR of 60/100, but eventually shot up to around 80/100. However, they hit a wall against Michigan and Ohio State, and that’s where the handicap for this game lies.
With their rating knocked back to 75/100, Indiana hammered Purdue to end the season, and if that result earns them enough credit to be under our projected of -10, that’s a mistake.
Curt Cignetti was awarded Coach of the Year, and it’s well-deserved for turning Indiana around so quickly, but if he was such a magician when it comes to game-planning, the Hoosiers would have done more than 153 yards (almost all of which came in the first and last garbage-time drive) in Columbus. The problem was, they were physically overmatched on the offensive and defensive line - the type of thing that should be the case against an Irish team that’s been pushing teams around all season.
Admittedly, Notre Dame’s schedule has been similarly soft - catching many of their opponents at their low point of the season, but Indiana’s second-ranked offense by EPA/Play was shown to be fraudulent against the Buckeyes, two weeks after they managed just 1.4 yards per carry at home against Michigan.
With not enough being accounted for an Irish home-field advantage, and a run-heavy, defense-first approach, suiting the winter weather, backing the Irish to slowly pull away from Indiana, is the way to approach this game.
Pick: Notre Dame (-7, -115 at Bet365)
(11) SMU @ (6) Penn State (-8.5, 54)
Projected spread: Penn State -10.5
Opening line: Penn State -7.5
My early bet: NonePenn State failing to cover in the Big Ten Championship should be a credit to Oregon more than a downgrade of the Nittany Lions. Running for nine yards per carry will win you a lot of games, and I think their physical dominance will serve them well against a SMU team who found themselves in the CFP based more on the Committee backing themselves into a corner with how they ranked the Mustangs in early November, versus anything that happened on the field in the season’s last month.
We don’t want a James Franklin team in big games against teams of similar talent, but the Nittany Lions did live up to their preseason rating of 87/100. They lost to Ohio State (88) and Oregon (92), and beat everyone else.
Moving over to the ACC from the AAC, SMU’s estimated market rating was hard to pin down because their schedule (without games against Miami or Clemson, and with not much in non-conference opponents) looked so soft even back in August. The Mustangs were upset by BYU but then they started stacking wins and up came their rating, which is how they became a favorite in the ACC title game. SMU then lost, falling behind by three scores, but curried favor in the CFP committee room by coming back to tie it late in Charlotte.
Surprisingly, Drew Allar has announced that he’s coming back to State College next year, which suggests the internal belief within the Nittany Lions is high, and there’s a real buy-in about the team as a whole. That might not be enough to win the whole thing this year, but Penn State has the goods in the trenches to setup Allar with chances to exploit the Mustangs’ defense, even more than Clemson did when they built a big lead. Then the run game takes over and the Nittany Lions close out SMU at home.
Pick: Penn State (-8.5, -110 at DraftKings)
(12) Clemson @ (5) Texas (-12, 51.5)
Projected spread: Texas -12.5
Opening line: Texas -11
My early bet: NoneThe betting market’s liked Texas all season long, favoring them over Georgia by five points earlier this season, and then again by three on a neutral site two weeks ago. It hasn’t much mattered that they lost both of those, so it wasn’t surprising that this line has drifted up to where we have this projected.
Clemson’s season has been up-and-down, but you have to play tough games to even have the privilege of a roller-coaster year. Otherwise, you’re just not good enough to have the highs.
The Tigers could have just not scheduled Georgia in the opener, and it would have been hard to foresee South Carolina being as good as they are this season, but there’s two (theoretically optional) non-conference games that other teams (like Texas, for example) didn’t have to deal with. So, when Clemson lost those games, and the scarlet ‘L’ goes in the column to the right, their CFP resume takes a hit, but it doesn’t mean they’re any worse than recent Clemson teams of the past.
The Tigers were lined at 9.5 wins before the season, so a 9-win regular season and an ACC title isn’t that far off from what their projection was, and there isn’t any reason to drop their rating (75/100) from August.
If -12 is a fair point spread, it’s on the basis that the Texas is full value for their really high rating, but that leaves more room for them to be disappointing, than for the Longhorns to surpass expectations.
Clemson doesn’t have the peak talent to knock off a legitimately top team on the road, but, as was the case for the ACC Championship, the Tigers have enough experience in big games to be able to compete with Texas and stay within two touchdowns in Austin.
Pick: Clemson (+12, -110 at DraftKings)
(9) Tennessee @ (8) Ohio State (-7.5, 47)
Projected spread: Ohio State -6.8
Opening line: Ohio State -6.5
My early bet: Tennessee +7.5If there’s going to be an upset, this is the one. Even if there’s concern that Tennessee won’t handle the cold.
As if the Buckeyes have a ton of experience playing outdoors in December.
By EPA/Play, Ohio State’s net ranking is the best in the country, but the Buckeyes are 2-2 in games they truly cared about. They won’t physically overwhelm the Volunteers the way they did the Hoosiers, and Tennessee’s offensive scheme is a vastly different challenge than Penn State. In fact, the Vols’ spread offense is closer to that of Oregon, who racked up 496 total yards against the Buckeyes.
The Vols’ offensive metrics aren’t what they’ve been in the past few years because of a bizarre 4-game stretch where they couldn’t score in the first half, which burned them in their loss to Arkansas.
Playing only one good half has been the story for Tennessee, even when it’s made a positive impression. The Vols’ jumped out to a 10-0 lead at Georgia. They spotted Vanderbilt 14 points before going on a 36-9 run in Nashville.
It’s a spicy take, but given their defense is second only to OSU in EPA/Play and the offense can seemingly explode an any moment, no other team has a higher theoretical ceiling than Tennessee. However, the loss to Arkansas, and being unable to hold off the desperate Bulldogs in Athens, were enough to have the CFP Committee put the Vols’ on the brutal path of the 9-seed. Beating Ohio State, Oregon, and (potentially) Texas, just to get into the National Championship, is a lot to ask.
With some tumult still lingering in Columbus after the loss to Michigan, if the Vols’ start strong, at least they might earn the right to plant their flag… in the CFP quarterfinal.