Miami to miss the College Football Playoff? Why it's one of my preseason CFP value bets
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Last season, eight schools were an odds-on favorite to make the College Football Playoff — just four of them did.
None of those favorites were Indiana, who were +600 just to return to the 12-team playoff that the Hoosiers qualified for the season before, only to win the whole thing with relative ease.
Last season's CFP preview showed you can be wrong a few times, but if you're correct about the right one — Oklahoma to make the CFP at +500 odds — you can turn a profit in a notoriously difficult "make/miss" betting market.
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Part of the challenge is that three teams that were quantitatively among the top 12 in the country — Notre Dame, Texas, and Utah — stumbled at the wrong time, undermining their qualitative case for inclusion by the Committee. Teams can meet their lofty preseason projections but still not make the playoff. However, that also means lesser teams can cash as underdogs because of a few breaks, and big upsets.
College Football Playoff odds
The betting market — depicted below with the best available odds taken from prominent sportsbooks — will tell you who it thinks will make the College Football Playoff (and how likely they are to win it). You can draw a literal line after 12 teams:
This season, there are again eight teams that are odds-on to make the CFP, but only time will tell if half of those fall out of the committee's final rankings. Even if the chalk holds this year, there are still three spots for Power-Four "underdogs" to find their way into the tournament.
There are six teams from the SEC "above the line," but since we can be pretty certain that the league won't get that many in, there should be a significant long shot, or two, that makes the playoff.
Of course, one of those 12 spots will be taken by a Group of Six team, and only one from the group above (Boise State at +500) comes with odds shorter than 10-1.
The occasional imbalance between a team's odds to make the playoff, relative to its odds for winning it, is directly related to the relative ease of its regular season path.
For example, Miami's path out of the ACC is perceived relatively easy, but once the Hurricanes' competition gets trimmed down to playoff teams, the outlook isn't so favorable. On the flip side, the route for Texas to make the playoff includes a non-conference game with Ohio State, and the standard SEC gauntlet. However, if the Longhorns make it, the market thinks they have talent comparable to their postseason opponents.
Best bets to make the College Football Playoff
Favorite
Georgia to make the CFP (-230)
How good is Georgia expected to be this season?
We can think there might be value on Oklahoma (at +10) and Alabama (+3 at home) in the lookahead "Game of the Year" market, while still respecting market opinion that is making those the point spreads for what should be the Bulldogs' two toughest regular season games.
If the Bulldogs, who return quarterback Gunnar Stockton, and have reloaded everywhere else, are "supposed" to win those games, what game won't they be favored in?
Auburn and Florida don't feel ready to walk into Athens to get a win, and road trips to Ole Miss and South Carolina, while tough, won't have the Dawgs, as … well … 'dogs.
What if they take two losses? Well, like in 2024, Georgia's brand-name alone likely does some heavy-lifting in keeping it in the top 10. Especially, compared to how many other two-loss SEC teams there will be.
Underdogs
Penn State to make the CFP (+360)
We can complain about the way they do things in the CFP committee room (and I often will), or we can just roll with their penchant for getting lost in team records.
Matt Campbell brings a veteran group of Cyclones from Iowa State, and inherits his fair share of talent from a team that was among the favorites for a national title run before last season, but the complaint about Campbell is that he doesn't win the big game (ironic, given he replaces James Franklin). Luckily for the Nittany Lions, they don't have many on their schedule this year, opting not to challenge themselves in the non conference, while missing Ohio State, Oregon and Indiana. At least, until a potential Big Ten title game.
By then, if Campbell's team can beat USC at home, take down either Washington or Michigan on the road, and not blow any games as a significant favorite, the committee will look at an 11-1 Big Ten team, and compare it favorably to a series of (potentially better) three-loss SEC teams, and two-loss Power-Four conference teams. Then, when Penn State loses that big game in the conference championship, a cry will go out to not penalize the Nittany Lions for having to play an "extra" game.
Maybe that's not a 50/50 narrative, but available at +360, it's more plausible than an implied probability of 21.7%.
Tennessee to make the CFP (+380)
It's easier to envision a team, perceived to be, say, the eighth-best team in the SEC or Big Ten, moving its way up to the top-three in the conference, than it is to picture even the fourth-best team in either league winning it outright. In a strange way, it's easier to sneak your way into the CFP out of the SEC, than it is to get into the conference championship game. The Vols literally did it two years ago.
The formula for such a maneuver is rooted in taking advantage of one of the many opportunities for a headline win in the SEC. Tennessee gets Texas, Auburn, Alabama, and LSU coming to Neyland Stadium — a series of games where the nearby Tennessee River should have its head on a swivel for possible goal-posts getting thrown in it.
There's no such thing as "easy" in the SEC, but getting drawn just four road games — Arkansas, South Carolina, Texas A&M, and Vanderbilt (post-Diego Pavia) — is about as good as anyone could hope for.
The Vols are being undervalued because of uncertainty at quarterback, but if Josh Heupel can run his offense through an emerging candidate, Tennessee could get back in the playoff after a year away.
Louisville to make the CFP (+550)
Similarly, with a commensurate record, the second-best team in the ACC or Big 12 could garner enough support to out-resume a second-tier SEC or Big Ten team.
The one thing we've learned from two seasons of the 12-team playoff, and seeing how the committee works — it can be simplistic in how it views teams, falling back on team records above all else.
The concept of Louisville going undefeated in the regular season (or close to it), could get blown up on Sunday night of Week 1, but the betting market for their neutral-site matchup with Ole Miss has already seen money come in on the Cardinals, taking that point spread inside of a touchdown.
The idea that Louisville could go toe-to-toe with a playoff team from last season is supported by the high hopes for former high-level Ohio State QB recruit Lincoln Kienholz in Jeff Brohm's offense. The best way to bet on the ceiling for this partnership, is to back the Cardinals to cruise through a manageable schedule en route to an 11-1 record — with or without a season-opening win over an SEC team — that almost definitely garners inclusion in the CFP.
Group of Six
Air Force to make the CFP (40-1)
With so many choices, and none outstanding, let's go low-risk, high-reward in the Group of Six.
It is unlikely that a second G6 team will make the CFP this season, as was the case last season when both Tulane and James Madison snuck in because they were both ranked higher than Duke. Plus, with the re-emergence of the Pac-12 for a sixth "Group of…" champion, the pool of G6 teams that will be hunting that spot gets even more competitive.
The key to a G6 consideration is belief: Making the Committee believe that you could compete with a Power-Four team, you just need the chance.
Boise State has the shortest odds to make the CFP out of the G6, but the Broncos' move to the new Pac-12 makes that more difficult than when they were in the Mountain West, and given how Oregon is rated in the market, Boise is probably taking a big loss early to shatter the belief they can compete with the big schools.
Of the top-five teams on the oddsboard in the Pac-12, four are likely headed for a non-conference beatdown, and I don't believe San Diego State has what it takes to go undefeated.
Meanwhile, of the remnants in the Mountain West, UNLV's home games with Memphis and California are opportunities for flashy wins.
The problem for the Rebels is that they have to go to Air Force in the middle of October. The Falcons are good value to win the Mountain West, and potential wins over Navy and Army could carry enough weight to push them ahead of the champions of the MAC, Conference USA, Sun Belt and a seemingly down American Conference. At that point, not having played a Power-Four team will be better than having already lost handily to one, in the eyes of a Committee all-too-happy to give a service academy a shot.
At 40-1, why not?
Best bets to miss the CFP
Texas A&M to miss the playoff (-190)
Last season, the Aggies stunned Notre Dame in South Bend, and then rode a relatively soft SEC schedule to a point where the CFP committee had planted the undefeated Aggies firmly in the tournament. By the time they took a convincing loss in the regular season finale at Texas, it felt too late to exclude them.
This year, the Aggies could get a big, early-season road win at new-look LSU, en route to a potential 7-0 record, and all kinds of respect in the committee boardroom. What happens after that, though, looks considerably different from last season.
Texas A&M closes the season at Alabama, at South Carolina, vs. Tennessee, at Oklahoma, and vs. Texas. That's a gauntlet that comes at the wrong time for a committee that tends to be reactive to what it has just seen. In this case, it will have likely seen 2-3 losses for a still really good team.
Miami to miss the playoff (+260)
Think about the highest-leverage game of 2025 — Notre Dame at Miami, and how drastically history changes if the Irish win that game.
The Hurricanes don't make the playoff. The Irish do.
Even assuming Miami's as good as the team that went to the national title game last year, it's a projected touchdown underdog on the road in South Bend this year. Of course, the Canes aren't guaranteed to lose two ACC games again, but a loss to the Irish and one upset in league play — something that tends to happen to Mario Cristobal teams — would leave Miami vulnerable to being left out this time around.
As referenced above, the competition in the ACC appears undervalued, where Clemson (which hosts the Canes) is capable of a bounce-back season, and the two teams that beat Miami last year (SMU, Louisville) could clip the Canes again in a potential ACC title matchup. If someone else earns the ACC championship again, it's going to be a lot tougher to shoehorn Miami into the final at-large spot, with the Irish already sitting in one of the chairs when the music stops.
You can find more valuable betting analysis from Yahoo! Sports betting contributor, Matt Russell, at THE WINDOW.
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