The College Football Playoff Committee faced a brutal test in early December.
There were at least three deserving teams for the remaining two spots in the 2023-24 College Football Playoff.
Undefeated conference champions Michigan and Washington were locks to make it.
From there, Florida State (13-0, ACC champion), Alabama (12-1, SEC champion) and Texas (12-1, Big 12 champion) all had cases to be included in the four-team field.
In the end, Texas was the No. 3 seed (and a 4-point spread favorite facing No. 2 Washington).
Alabama got the No. 4 seed and opened as a 2.5-point underdog against No. 1 seed Michigan.
That sound you just heard was the money coming in on the Crimson Tide, who were down to a 1.5-point underdog on the Monday following the selection process. At DraftKings Sportsbook, 78% of the bets and 89% of the total dollars wagered were on Alabama as of Monday morning.
What did oddsmakers think of Florida State’s snub? We asked a few to find out.
One sportsbook that certainly wasn’t happy to see Alabama get into the playoff was BetMGM.
In August, the sportsbook took a $205,000 wager on the Crimson Tide at +600 odds to win the national championship – a bet that would win $1.2 million if Alabama wins the playoff.
It was the largest reported national championship futures wager still alive at any U.S. sportsbook.
It meant that Alabama winning was BetMGM’s worst-case scenario among the remaining four teams.
“If Alabama beats Michigan and makes it to the national championship, we’re going to have some bookmaking decisions to make,” Seamus Magee, sportsbook trader at BetMGM, told me on Monday.
Continued Magee: “We had a small liability on Florida State, but nowhere near what we have on Alabama. I would’ve preferred FSU in the futures book.”
Regardless of the futures book, though, Magee noted that Alabama-Michigan is “a dream from a bookmaking standpoint.”
“It’s going to be one of our bigger handles of the year, and I think we’re going to take a lot of Alabama money,” he said.
Other sportsbooks were in a similar position regarding Alabama. Zachary Lucas, head of retail trading at TwinSpires, said Alabama is also their biggest futures liability.
“It wasn’t a good decision for us with Alabama,” Lucas said. “Alabama is our biggest liability. “We had them up to 40/1 after the loss to Texas [in September] and saw quite a few bets on them. They are our worst result by a long shot.”
Lucas also said they had seen early Alabama money and that he expects the Alabama-Michigan game to close as a pick’em or Alabama -1.
Twin Spires had a “yes/no” market on Florida State to make the playoff up for about 12 hours, opening Yes -400, No +285. Most of the money came in on the “no” side, and it closed No +120.
“It was the right decision to have Alabama in, I’m not surprised,” Lucas said. “As a fan, turning off the oddsmaker blinders is hard. It just wouldn’t have been a competitive game against Michigan.”
The competition level of a potential CFP semifinal was brought up by other oddsmakers as well. Several set a hypothetical Michigan-Florida State line anywhere from Michigan -13.5 to Michigan -15.5.
“Nobody would’ve wanted to bet Michigan,” Magee said. “Florida State is probably a fringe top-15 team without [quarterback] Jordan Travis starting.”
Other oddsmakers agreed with the assessment that Florida State wasn’t close to one of the four best teams.
Thomas Gable, sportsbook director at Borgata in Atlantic City, said his power rankings are Michigan, Georgia, Ohio State and then Alabama.
As for Florida State: “I would probably put them No. 4 in my power ratings, about a point above Alabama if they had Travis. Without him, they’d barely be scraping the top 10.”
Oddsmakers I spoke with believed that the Alabama-Michigan semifinal would be the more heavily bet of the two semifinals and likely the highest handle college football game of the season, especially because of the month-long wait from when the odds are released to when the game is played.
It’s a tough pill to swallow for Florida State fans, but college football fans ended up with a better matchup leaving the Seminoles at home.
Photo by Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images
