Alabama has been the most popular team on the college football futures market in the days following the first College Football Playoff poll of the season.
Jason Simbal of CG Technology said more money has come in on the one-loss Crimson Tide than any other team since the selection committee announced its top 25 rankings with Alabama at No. 4 on Tuesday.
“Alabama was the second favorite behind Ohio State going into the season, and obviously lost to Ole Miss,” Simbal said. “That dropped them all the way from the 5-1, 6-1 range, all the way to 20-1, and in some places even 25-1. And now, they’re all the way back down at some of these books. The reason is, people are realizing the probably are the best team, and people would rather just bet them in the futures market, because chances are, they’re winning out if they win this game (against LSU).”
Simbal speculates that action in the futures market is part of the reason sportsbooks are seeing less interest in this Saturday night’s matchup between No. 2 LSU and No. 4 Alabama. The Tigers—currently listed at 7-1 odds to win the national championship—are the only unbeaten team left in the SEC, but still have dates with Ole Miss, Arkansas and Texas A&M looming after this weekend.
“This game’s actually been surprisingly quiet in terms of the betting volume,” Simbal said. “We’re expecting the Alabama money to come. They’ve beaten LSU three times in a row and just generally, people will bet Alabama no matter what. But so far, for that game, it’s been a little more quiet than I expected.”
In terms of this weekend’s marquee games, TCU at Oklahoma State is attracting to the most attention.
“We’ve gotten more action on TCU than we have on either Bama or Clemson,” Simbal said.
TCU is favored by five points as of Thursday night. Simbal added that the total on the game was drawing significant interest as well, inching up from 76.5 to 77.5 throughout the week.