The guys who make a living at our hobby have put their numbers together, and they're really interesting. Here's some highlights.
The preseason national champs story might be titled "Round Up the Usual Suspects":
Florida is the chalk for a national championship, sitting at 2:1 right now, - followed by the Sooners of OK at 9:2.
- Texas is 11:2, and
- Pete Carroll's Trojans are 6:1.
If we try to infer relative strength from the national championship odds, the Big 10 looks like this:
Ohio State at 12:1 for a national championship, then Penn State at 30:1, then State of Confusion. Seven more Big 10 teams are individually priced as national champion wagers:
- Michigan State 75:1
- Illinois 75:1
- Iowa 100:1
- Wisconsin 100:1
- Michigan 150:1
- Minnesota 150:1
- Purdue 150:1
Indiana and Northwestern are omitted; they are included in who you get if you choose "the field", i.e everybody who's not individually priced. Most appraisals have Purdue and Indiana as the only two in the conference who have no bowl prospect, so why would Indiana be priced as superior to Purdue? Northwestern is generally expected to be about mid-pack in the conference, but their 40:1 price would appear to indicate that they are superior to the rest of the Big 10 pack, and that's not so.
The answer to both riddles appears to be volume. Nobody cares about Indiana, and NU has a small alumni base, hence a there's not going to be a lot of money going their way. The others are relatively large state schools who will attract some play out of a sense of loyalty. So after you get past the first two, there's no correlation between national championship odds and expected conference rank.
The 12th team in the Big Ten is a great example of marketing. Notre Dame, is 30:1 to win the national title. This is the oddsmakers selling what the people --the loyal fan base--want to buy. ND has no realistic chance to win a national championship, but sports a sufficiently attractive price point to attract some dreamers and incense some loyalists. It's kind of like bass fishing: attract 'em or make 'em mad, just make 'em hit the lure.
Elsewhere, favorites for some of the conferences:
- in the ACC it's Virgina Tech, followed by Clemson and Florida State.
- The Big 12 has Texas at the top, with the Sooners right behind them.
- The SEC has Florida as the prohibitive favorite at 1:2, with Alabama, LSU and Ole Miss a pick 'em to follow.
Next time, my future wagers. This waiting game is madness.
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Off topic: Brett Fahhhrrrrve, why the outcry over Brett Fahhhrrrrve? Rick Telander may be getting a bit bitchy as he ages; did you read his Wednesday missive? "How can the Vikings believe anything he says?"!!!! Sports nomad, self centered, unfair to Thieves and Scoundrels Local and the other MN QB's...give it a rest! It wasn't just Telander, there were legions of scribes acrosse the land throwing back their noggins, clawing at the heavens and wailing about what a scourge on the land St. Brett has become.The NFL is a big business, a collection of little businesses bound together to exhibit behemoths beating the tar out of each other on a weekly basis on a television near you. The little businesses go out and hire guys to beat on the other guys and then hire more guys when the old guys break. They all do it for one reason...money! No surprise here, so why is St. Brett being taken to task for changing his mind and renting his battered 40 year old carcass to a willing bidder?
By the way, Fahhhrrrrve's college coach wanted him to play DB. The team that picked him for the pros was none other than the Atlanta Falcons, for whom he threw a grand total of four passes before being handed a ticket north. The Packers, criiiiminy pete and ya hey, could have kept him up in the hinterlands and didn't. The Jets didn't fold up when he left NY.
Let's overlook that Fahhhrrrrve looks funny with that big white Viking horn on the side of his helmet. If he helps MN win, all the naysayers will be rummaging through their thesauruses to find new and higher levels of prosaic praise.
If not, well, he still gets to keep the money.
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