Cover Photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images


Somehow we're already three weeks into the college football season, which means we're only about 10 weeks away from knowing the four teams that will participate in this year's playoff. 


If we've learned anything from past years it's that the top four heading into conference play are very rarely the top four at the end of the season, oh and that Alabama will make the playoff. 


The odds agree on that second part:

Alabama comes in as a significant favorite to win the national title again, even when compared to Clemson at +500. The current No. 2 team in the nation, Georgia, has the fourth best odds at +750 probably because they're going to have to play Alabama in SEC championship game. Theoretically, only one team between Alabama and Georgia can make the playoff, but who knows with the SEC, especially after both of those teams made it last year. 


The Big Ten shockingly has four different teams among the Top 15 favorites here and that's more because of how mediocre the conference is as a whole than anything else. The route to the playoff is fairly simple for them. It just revolves around beating Ohio State. Or for Ohio State, it's just going undefeated. Still, Michigan as the sixth highest favorite to win the national title seems like a bit of a stretch, especially over Notre Dame who they lost to head to head. 


Wisconsin is also a stretch even at +4500 given that they just lost to BYU at home. Then there's having the No. 7 team in the nation, Stanford, at +6500 while No. 10 Washington is +2200. 


All this being said, it's still very early in the year and only a handful of conference games have been played. The closest things to sure things are Alabama and Clemson, but even Clemson has missed the playoff before. 

Get $20 with your first deposit on FanDuel. Join Now.

Ian McCafferty is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Ian McCafferty also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username itmccaff. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in their articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.