College Football FPI Rankings Don’t Match Futures Odds

• The Alabama Crimson Tide and Clemson Tigers are the favorites on both the FPI and odds boards.
• The Oklahoma Sooners and Ohio State Buckeyes are both given a better chance than the Georgia Bulldogs on the FPI despite odds favoring Georgia.
• The FPI gives Texas A&M and Notre Dame better chances than the betting odds.

ATLANTA – The FPI and sportsbooks essentially do the same thing in attempting to predict which teams will make the playoffs and win the championship.

However, the two have some differing opinions on teams. To the surprise of nobody, the Alabama Crimson Tide and Clemson are the two favorites on both sources. However, in a slightly different fashion.

The legal betting sites have Alabama as a +250 favorite with Clemson as the second choice with +400 odds. However, the FPI gives Clemson a better chance than Alabama to both make the playoffs (78% to 72%) as well as win the National Championship (28% to 27%).

The debate between Alabama and Clemson has been around for years, but it seems the consensus is that these are, once again, the top two teams in the country despite both having new quarterbacks under center.

The Top Contenders (Oklahoma, Ohio State, Georgia)

The question of who will fill out the CFP bracket will almost always have the Oklahoma Sooners, Ohio State Buckeyes and Georgia Bulldogs at the forefront of the conversation.

Anyone familiar with betting on college football will know that these teams are often at near the top of the rankings, but the FPI and betting odds differ in opinions on which teams have a better chance than the others.

The odds say it goes Georgia (+500) followed by Ohio State (+600) and Oklahoma (+600) while the FPI gives the edge to Oklahoma (66% make playoffs, 17% win title) over Ohio State (59% make playoffs, 13% win title) and Georgia (25% make playoffs, 4% win title).

The biggest differential is Georgia, which odds give the third-best chance to win the title and FPI gives the fifth-best chance.

The Third Tier Schools (Iowa State, Texas A&M, Notre Dame, LSU)

This is where things really get shaken up a bit. The FPI rounds out its top 10 with Texas A&M, Texas, Notre Dame, Iowa State and Miami while the odds suggest it goes Iowa State, LSU, Texas A&M, Florida and North Carolina.

Given that these are more of a shot in the dark than the top programs, we’ll ignore Iowa State and Texas A&M as they are on both lists.

Maybe the biggest difference of any school comes in the form of Notre Dame. The FPI lists Notre Dame as the school with the sixth-best chance to make the playoffs and the seventh-best chance to win the title. The odds put the Fighting Irish as the 15th choice, tied with Miami which the FPI also has in the top 10.

Another big difference is LSU who is given +3500 odds to win the CFP, good for seventh-shortest. However, they are listed with just a 0.4% chance to make the playoffs and 0.1% chance to win the title by the FPI.

News tags: Alabama Crimson Tide | Clemson Tigers | College Football | College Football Playoff | Georgia Bulldogs | NCAA Football | Ohio State Buckeyes | Oklahoma Sooners