Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com
Even losing to the Auburn Tigers last week in the Iron Bowl has not dropped the Alabama Crimson Tide from being a favorite to win this year’s College Football Playoff National Championship Game.
The big difference though is that the Crimson Tide now share that title with two other teams, the Oklahoma Sooners and the Clemson Tigers, with all of them listed as +375 co-favorites to win it all right now.
Alabama needs some help in order to get into the CFP for the fourth year in a row, but many experts believe it will happen, with the belief that the committee is more likely to take a quality one-loss team like the Tide than other two-loss squads. The Georgia Bulldogs (+750) are another quality one-loss team in the mix, but they will need to beat the Tigers in the SEC Championship Game in order to get into the field.
Those teams with two losses looking to make the four-team CFP field include Auburn (+450) and the Ohio State Buckeyes (+800), and they both get the opportunity to state their case Saturday in their respective conference championship games. The Tigers seem to have a better shot than the Buckeyes too considering they play in the SEC instead of the Big Ten. Ohio State has lost to Oklahoma and the Iowa Hawkeyes.
The Wisconsin Badgers (+1000) are the lone major unbeaten school left, and they will need to upset the Buckeyes as 6-point underdogs in the Big Ten Championship Game to get into the CFP. Wisconsin was blown out by Ohio State 59-0 in this game three years ago as 4-point chalk.
Quarterback J.T. Barrett missed that matchup for the Buckeyes due to an ankle injury, and he will be ready to go this time despite playing with a sore knee.
In the ACC Championship Game, the Miami Hurricanes (+1800) must upset two-time defending conference champ Clemson in their first-ever appearance to have any shot. But that still may not be enough for Miami to get into the CFP because the committee might still view Alabama as a superior team. As the defending national champ, Clemson simply needs to win to make the CFP for the third straight year.
Three longshots to get into the CFP are the USC Trojans (+10000), TCU Horned Frogs (+10000) and Central Florida Knights (+20000). The Trojans and Horned Frogs each already have two losses as they attempt to win the Pac-12 and Big 12 Championship Games, respectively, while the Knights are also undefeated like the Badgers but not ranked high enough as the top team in the American Athletic Conference.
