2025 college football betting preview: Best bets to make/miss the College Football Playoff

Taking Oregon as our summer bet to win the College Football Playoff last season seemed like a good idea for the remaining months, weeks, and days of 2024, as the Ducks ran the table during the regular season, beat Penn State convincingly to end their first Big Ten season as league champs and earned the CFP No. 1 seed.

Then 2025 hit, the Rose Bowl started, and minutes later, it became clear that Oregon was overmatched against Ohio State.

Advertisement

What can you do?

The goal for betting anything that won’t be decided for four months or more, is to capture odds now that will improve over the course of the season (just like the Ducks did) because the team’s path to winning gets easier in that time.

Last year’s debut of the 12-team playoff changed the calculus for that road to a title, as the Buckeyes were able to suffer not just an early loss (at Oregon), but an earth-shattering upset at the hands of Michigan, and still not just remain a contender, but garner a top-8 seed and crucial home-field advantage in their quarterfinal matchup with Tennessee.

The betting market will tell you who it thinks will make the College Football Playoff (and how likely they are to win it), and you can draw a literal line after 12 teams:

The chart above (provided by BetMGM) shows that there’s a different probability in making the playoff from the Big Ten (Oregon) compared to the ACC (Clemson), and even SEC teams like South Carolina and Tennessee have different odds to make the playoff, despite the same odds to win it all.

Advertisement

Interestingly, while we have the teams ordered by national championship odds, the “to make the CFP” odds aren’t in lockstep. Florida is one of the 12 most-likely teams to win it all, but three other teams are apparently more likely to make it.

With a whopping sample size of one season, we’ve seen that there are some long shots to be found. Last summer, SMU had 11-1 odds to make the College Football Playoff, while neither Indiana nor Arizona State even made our chart prior to 2024. That brings hope for teams like Missouri, North Carolina, Baylor, Kansas, BYU, TCU, Iowa, Duke and Washington. Live a little – pick a long shot.

Notably, there were multiple routes to a surprising CFP berth, as the Sun Devils did it by winning the Big 12, while the Mustangs finished a close second in the ACC and the Hoosiers qualified as the fourth-best team from arguably the best conference. Meanwhile, the SEC only got three playoff teams, seemingly because the committee couldn’t decide between Ole Miss, Alabama and South Carolina.

Advertisement

Fundamentally, the whole thing is built on how clean your resume is, and managing the opportunities and threats to what could eventually be a playoff-caliber CV.

Favorite

Clemson Tigers (-185)

Let’s start with some math. And yes, I know you were told there’d be no math.

At odds of -110 at BetMGM, Clemson is perceived to be better than 50/50 to win the ACC ( (52.5%), which feels about right.

Odds of -185 to make the CFP imply that Clemson should make the playoff just shy of 65% of the time, which feels low for Yahoo’s No. 1 ranked team.

That 12.5% “tax” measures the scenario where Clemson loses the ACC title game, but makes it into the CFP anyway. If you think that probability is higher than 1-in-8, then the Tigers are a valuable bet in this market instead of the conference championship.

Advertisement

The reason to believe that is two-fold:

1. The ACC showed they could pull two CFP bids last season, as SMU made it with an 11-2 record, and not much in the form of quality wins.

2. Clemson has two non-conference opportunities to build its resume – favored over LSU at home, and South Carolina on the road. Wins over either, plus a berth in the conference title game (thanks to a soft league slate) should be enough to make sure a team that’s already held in high regard gets back into the playoff … without having to win the ACC title game in Charlotte.

Underdogs

Oklahoma Sooners (+500)

Oklahoma going 9-3 with the schedule in front of them might be a long shot, but +500 is just enough of a potential payout to coax us into a bet on the chances the CFP committee recognizes how incredible that record would be given what the Sooners have to deal with.

Brett Venables finally produced a dominant defense last season, but in order to keep his job, it appears he’s not allowed anywhere near the offensive side of the ball, except for whatever input he had in bringing in the offensive coordinator-quarterback combination of Ben Arbuckle and John Mateer from Washington State. Arbuckle did wonders at Western Kentucky before working with Cam Ward the year before he went to Miami.

Advertisement

With a potential non-conference home win over Michigan, Oklahoma should be 5-0 before the Red River Rivalry. Playing the AP No. 1 close in the Cotton Bowl, should keep them in the conversation.

From there, if the Sooners go 4-2 in six games against South Carolina, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri, and LSU (five currently ranked teams), that translates into a resume with at least five big wins – one coming on the road, and a strong finish.

The brutal SEC schedule may keep the best version of Oklahoma from getting to the conference title game, but will give it enough opportunity to impress a committee who might be feeling some regret about eschewing good teams with three losses for inferior ones with a better record last season.

Utah Utes (+500)

Both Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark and Iowa State were chagrined by not being considered for the CFP last season, but the Cyclones could have just not blown a home game to Texas Tech in the final two minutes. Had it been a 1-loss team with a win over Iowa in the non-conference, Iowa State would have potentially gotten in, even after losing to Arizona State in the Big 12 title game. It wasn’t that long ago (three years) that TCU made it into the (four-team!) playoff, even after losing to Kansas State for the conference championship.

Advertisement

Utah’s +500 odds here aren’t far off from its +550 odds to win the Big 12, so why not pay a small tax for the backup plan – that the Big 12 can get two bids. After all, there’s a bigger gap between the other Big 12 contenders’ odds in those two markets. (e.g. Kansas State is +700 to win Big 12, but +400 to make the playoff)

Without a notable non-conference showdown on the schedule, the TCU route — an outstanding regular-season record — might be the way that Utah can run up the rankings before arguably their trickiest road game, at Kansas in Week 14.

Long shot

Virginia Tech Hokies (14-1)

In honor of Indiana, SMU, and Arizona State, we need one “just for fun” long shot for 2025.

Advertisement

In 2023, those three teams combined for a 17-21 record — buoyed by SMU’s 11-3 mark in the American. A year ago, the case for those three teams would have been flimsier than making a case for the Hokies, who were considered something of a sleeper in the ACC.

A disappointing 6-6 record was the product of a season-opening loss to Vanderbilt that looked less catastrophic just a couple weeks later, and four more one-possession defeats. Plus, Virginia Tech was in a dogfight with Clemson — shutting out the Tigers in the first half, only to lose Kyron Drones to injury for the season.

A year later, they still have the mercurial Drones, an opportunity to get noticed with a home game against South Carolina in Week 1 and a schedule that’s relatively cozy, with Georgia Tech as their toughest trip (Miami and Louisville come to Blacksburg). If the bad record in close games isn’t a function of poor coaching, a turnaround won’t be so surprising.

Group of Five

Memphis Tigers (+850)

UNLV Rebels (18-1)

On paper, it’s a race between 64 teams from five conferences, competing for the committee’s one token Group of Five (G5) CFP spot, but with all due respect to the MAC and Conference USA, it’s not happening.

Advertisement

The path to the No. 1 G5 ranking requires a convincing conference championship and one of two other resume points:

1. Play another CFP candidate and be competitive in a loss (eg. Boise State vs. Oregon in 2024), and finish with one loss

2. Beat a Power Five conference opponent to get noticed and finish with one loss or less

Looking at the top candidates in American, Mountain West and Sun Belt, here are the top non-conference opponents of each contender, and the projected point spread in that game:

If the equation is “show-out in your big non-conference game” and “win your league”, every team but Memphis and UNLV has a big hurdle (to be competitive) before they even get to their league schedule, so it’s worth splitting a unit across the Tigers and Rebels to generate the same payout.

Example:

• 0.35 units on UNLV to win 6.3 units (net 5.65)

• 0.65 units on Memphis to win 5.5 units (net 5.25)

The Tigers are +825 (10.8% implied probability) compared to +550 (15.4%) to win the American, and their schedule has all its most difficult opponents coming to Memphis.

Advertisement

There’s massive turnover for Ryan Silverfield’s group, but that creates an element of uncertainty that we want in a long shot. Especially when it’s a program that’s been historically among the favorites to emerge from the Group of Five.

UNLV’s “uncertainty” comes from Dan Mullen taking over in Vegas. Mullen oversaw quick turnarounds in his first seasons at both Mississippi State and Florida, taking over a 4-7 team and going 10-3 in Gainesville.

Rather than bet UNLV at +700 for the Mountain West, if they can convert being a projected favorite into a win over UCLA, even a loss at Boise State could still result in a title game rematch. Winning that game would give the Rebels a legitimate argument to be included in the College Football Playoff.

Best bets to miss the playoff

Given that just eight teams are favored to make the CFP, the odds reflect how difficult it still is to get in. There are plenty of good teams not favored who intend to put up a significant challenge.

Advertisement

So, who’s vulnerable to get “their” spot stolen?

Ohio State (+250)

To pick against a team that’s “supposed to make it” is never easy since any one of them is a perennial powerhouse. The only case against a team like Ohio State (relative to the odds), is that there are enough tough games that might not go the Buckeyes’ way that they don’t qualify for the 13th data point that a conference championship game provides.

Ohio State didn’t need to get to the Big Ten title game last year, but with Texas in the opener and Penn State also coming to Columbus, they face the top two teams in the AP poll. If they went 0-2 in those, would anyone be shocked? If they lose both, not only will their at-large candidacy be in jeopardy, but making it to Indianapolis will be too. Especially, with a road slate that includes Washington, Illinois, Wisconsin and, yes, Michigan.

Advertisement

With a new quarterback and coordinators on both offense and defense, a nine-win season would be understandable, and even the “wrong” 10-2 record might not be enough, depending on how things shake out elsewhere.

You can find more valuable bets and analysis from Yahoo Sports betting contributor, Matt Russell, at THE WINDOW.