Who does Vegas say is winning in 2023?
How is Vegas handicapping the P5 conference field and playoff race now that spring football and the transfer portal have started to settle?
Vegas has started floating out win totals you can bet on for the coming college football season now that spring and much of the portal madness has resolved. They’ll have odds to win the conference before long but the win totals basically give you an idea of who’s expected to contend and who isn’t.
Personally I don’t bet and I don’t encourage other people to do so either, but you’ll never find a better mechanism for discussing and weighing possible futures than future bets.
I thought I’d pick off some of the top teams in each conference, per these over/under on win totals from betonline.ag, and give a few notes on Vegas’ current hierarchy of national contenders. This is basically a nice run-up to offering some general thoughts on the state of the 2023-24 College Football Playoff race.
The Big 12
There are basically three tiers of contenders in the Big 12’s win totals they offer you to make wagers on.
Texas and Oklahoma at 9.5
K-State at 8.5
Baylor, TCU, Texas Tech at 7.5
The grouping of Texas and Oklahoma on the same tier is interesting. The Sooners were pretty bad last year and had five players on offense drafted, including guys at the integral positions of tackle (both of em) and deep threat receiver (Marvin Mims). Considering this team was powered by offense a year ago, this seems potentially damaging. Defensively they obviously expect to improve considerably but they’ll need to make quite a leap. Oklahoma does have a remarkably easy schedule, but solid teams with weak schedules don’t win 10 games. You have to be consistently very good to pull down wins every week.
Texas had five players drafted as well, but two of them were running backs and they otherwise return 10 starters on offense while adding Georgia receiver Adonai Mitchell. The Longhorns will bring 4-5 receivers (including the tight end) who could be drafted into 2023, return quarterback Quinn Ewers, both tackles, 2-3 defensive tackles with hopes of being drafted after the season, four starting defensive backs plus two more transfers, etc.
The true is that Texas is a massive favorite in the league if you can take off the glasses which say “the Longhorns always underachieve, it’s drama central.” Their base of experienced, skilled athleticism at receiver and defensive back alone is frankly overwhelming.
I’ve already written on why I like Texas Tech as the other main contender opposite Texas as opposed to Oklahoma, Kansas State, TCU, or Baylor. Oklahoma is going to need to overwhelm opponents with defensive pressure to be good, which is dicey. Kansas State is replacing some COVID senior veterans and several NFL playmakers from their Big 12 title team and reloading at a place like Manhattan isn’t cut and dry. Ditto TCU. Baylor is actually in more of a rebuild than they were a year ago after graduating most of their stalwarts in the trenches and pushing out the defensive backs they disliked in 2022.
The Big 10
The Big 10 has a very typical elite tier that goes:
Michigan and Ohio State at 10.5
Penn State at 9.5
Notre Dame at 9
Notre Dame I include here because they don’t need their own heading. The Irish have a top-loaded schedule with Ohio State and USC at home, Clemson on the road, but otherwise have navigable path to stacking wins. I don’t feel great about their offense delivering over nine wins without seeing a dominant wideout on the roster. The fact they promoted a tight end coach from an already run-centric offense doesn’t encourage me either. The defense is intriguing.
The Ohio State hype machine is pretty standard and a result of their consistent excellence over the last two decades and in the playoff era in particular. Marvin Harrison Jr is considered to be potentially the best player in college football and I’ve even seen Mock Drafts with an Ohio State defensive tackle (Michael Hall) going in the first round.
I sure didn’t see that first round D-tackle play in the Michigan or Georgia games, apparently Hall was injured in September last year and slowed up for the rest of the year. We’ll see if he makes a difference this coming season. I’m not betting against an Ohio State playoff run if they have first round talents at both D-tackle and deep threat receiver.
Michigan’s season and postseason hopes hinge on developing J.J. McCarthy into an NFL quarterback this offseason. For the last two seasons the Wolverines have been content to win by powering over opponents in the run game and playing good defense. That’s not yielding a National Championship, McCarthy has to dominate games throwing the ball.
I don’t have a great feel for Penn State but no doubt they have a good amount of talent on the team despite several big losses. There’s some hype for new quarterback Drew Allar but they seem pretty likely to lean into a run game and use him as more of a constraint.
The Big 10 West is collapsing due to Wisconsin starting over philosophically, Kirk Ferentz’s nepotism, and Nebraska’s newest reset. They really need to fix the divisional imbalance when they add USC, UCLA, and whoever else joins in (Washington and Oregon).
Speaking of western teams…
The Pac-12
The Pac-12 is as deep and strong as I remember seeing it in years. Here’s how Vegas ordered it:
Oregon and USC at 9.5
Washington at 9
Utah at 8.5
I don’t have a great feel for Oregon. They hired Tulane’s defensive coordinator off a really strong year with a 12-2 Green Wave squad and retained quarterback Bo Nix after a very strong year one.
The NFL did claim six Ducks though and graduation otherwise gutted an extremely experienced, veteran Oregon O-line which had been built under the guidance of Mario Cristobal and his assistant Alex Mirabal. I also noted that some of Cristobal’s young recruits for their line were lost when he left. Kingsley Saumataia transferred to BYU and is the starting left tackle there, Kelvin Banks de-committed and is the starting left tackle for Texas, a few others also transferred or went elsewhere but those two alone were massive losses. How well can Dan Lanning and his staff restock it? Or will the Ducks move away from the power-spread designs of Cristobal toward a different approach? Chip Kelly always had a different approach, turning small but feisty kids from Northern California and Oregon into a stretch-blocking unit. Cristobal recruited massive athletes from around the nation.
Washington has good Edges, Michael Penix at quarterback, at least two potentially pro-caliber wideouts, it’s a very good team overall. Predicting their victory over Texas in the Alamo Bowl was my fourth consecutive easy call Longhorn bowl game outcome. I had Texas beating Georgia in 2018, Utah in 2019, and Colorado in 2020 and shocked Inside Texas readers when I dismissed their chances against Washington. Georgia and Utah had a bunch of opt-outs though and Colorado was a paper tiger propped up by COVID scheduling. In 2022 it was Texas with the opt-outs and lack of motivation against a very strong Husky lineup. Washington will be looking to make the national main stage this coming year.
Utah is losing their left tackle and 1st round tight end Dalton Kincaid, but they have a number of other good tight ends and their reload on defense looks very promising. They also managed to hang on to offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig when Notre Dame tried to poach him. I think the Utes are in great shape for a run at a three-peat (Pac-12 title) in terms of their own roster, but will face MUCH steeper competition than normal from the rest of the league.
USC is absolutely loaded. I’d carve them into the playoffs if not for the fact all three other teams mentioned above could make the playoffs without shocking me. I think this is the second toughest conference in the nation next year. Which is kinda funny in light of the fact the conference appears to be on the verge of folding.
The ACC
This is mostly a two-team showdown with Miami lurking as a key team whether they’re good or not. The top two are…
Clemson at 9.5
North Carolina at 8.5
North Carolina got popped by the transfer portal and almost even lost star quarterback Drake Maye, who has the potential to be the best player in the country next year (it’s a loaded field).
Rumors had schools offering Maye $4 or $5 million to attend their school in 2023. Then rumors had Miami having to pony up to keep their quarterback enrolled, then Tyler Buchner transferred to Alabama. I’m just drawing dots, you tell me if they’re connected.
The Tar Heels did change their offensive coordinator and add a few good receivers in the transfer portal, so they surely have a shot.
Clemson I’ve written about, I feel like they’ve lost their edge which came from cranking out NFL wideouts and defensive tackles. For over a year I cautioned that Cade Klubnik didn’t strike me as a 5-star talent at quarterback in high school, then that he wasn’t going to be able to save Clemson in 2022. I don’t think he’s cut out for carrying them in 2023 either, he might have had better teammates at Westlake high school than he does at Clemson.
I don’t know much about Miami or the league in general but North Carolina actually seems like a solid bet to win the thing. We’ll revisit if this league gets interesting.
The SEC
The SEC win totals strike me as being guilty of the normal inertia reasoning used to develop these picks. The things that were shall be once again.
Georgia at 11.5
Alabama at 10.5
LSU at 9.5
Tennessee at 9
I do think it’s right to believe Tennessee won’t really miss Hendon Hooker. He had a good year executing that system and making the most of his arm strength/running ability while avoiding turnovers. But it’s not the hardest system to execute, Joe Milton has been around to learn it for three years now, and he has a lot of the same qualities Hooker had.
Tennessee is also rebuilding their defense and returning a lot of key players from last year. I bet some teams have a better defensive plan for their Veer and Shoot style of offense, we’ll see if that impacts their winning or not. Replacing Jalin Hyatt is likely to be the main obstacle. That scheme is the ultimate shot offense, it’s all about having receivers who can win open, the quarterback just delivers it on time.
I like LSU in the West over Alabama. What exactly is the case for Alabama being elite this coming season? The fact they’ve been elite for years? What components to this coming team make you think they’ll be nationally great? The NFL just took 10 players off the roster. Which returning players have shown the promise to make us think they’ll anchor a championship-caliber team? A lot seems to ride on a JUCO wideout named Malik Benson and a lot of underclassmen.
Those guys could pan out and power the Tide to 10 wins and that’d be UNDER.
I’m working on more masterclass chess matches, currently I’m working through Hugh Freeze’s battle with Barry Odom, which should serve as an introduction to the new Auburn head coach’s offensive philosophy.
In the meantime, hit me up with more questions about the above teams or any other topics and we’ll do our second America’s War Game mailbag.
Georgia at 11.5 is one of those lines that you want to take the under on principal, but the East is so much less difficult than the West that it’s also hard to imagine who would really challenge them, South Carolina getting a money game from Rattler seems most likely, absent TN having a better game plan. The cross-divisional game against Ole Miss could be tricky provided they get good QB play and Lane puts a good game plan and preps with the same effort that he puts into for the Bama game.
No issue with LSU as the favorite in the West, I do think people are over correcting a bit to Bama’s “relative” struggles the last two years. On a pure talent basis, still arguably the best roster in the country. That being said LSU has the proven WRs and QB and enough talent on D along with a good DC so understandable they would be the favorite. With the possible exception of Harold Perkins somewhere, I’m not sure that Bama would trade a single D starter for anyone on LSU’s D.
PAC 12 is gonna be sneaky good, really curious to see Washington this year. Love Kalen DeBoer as a coach so far.
Those Big 12 lines outside of Texas, OU, and Tech all seem like a trap honestly.
Agree. Feels like UF either blossoms (9 wins?) or implodes (4-5 wins? start over yet again?) - and are unlikely to be in between. A player like Mertz is dangerous bc there are VERY low/negative expectations of him. If he's sneaky good, so will UF be. I think they're unlikely to beat UGA either way this year, though, bc they won't sneak up on them.