College Football

College Football Week 1 Odds: What sportsbooks are seeing so far

Updated Sep. 4, 2021 1:31 a.m. ET

By Sam Panayotovich
FOX Sports Betting Analyst

As we approach the first full Saturday of the 2021 college football season, bettors and bookmakers alike are sharpening their pencils in final preparation for a test they’ve had all offseason to study for.

The betting action tends to come from all different angles, but a bookmaker is usually rooting against blue-blood programs early in a season. Many bettors love firing wagers on teams that are perceived to be strong.

"Alabama, Texas and Notre Dame are getting most of the action in Week 1," WynnBET senior trader Motoi Pearson told me this week. "That’s not surprising by any means. They’ve got ‘em straight and in parlays. It would be nice if one of them doesn’t cover."

Spoken like a true bookmaker.

Of course, the college football game of the week is No. 3 Clemson against No. 5 Georgia at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte. The Tigers are currently a three-point favorite at FOX Bet, with a scoring total over/under of 51 points.

"Gun to my head, I would probably say Clemson wins," Pearson said after a deep exhale. "But I think Georgia is going to be vastly improved with J.T. Daniels at quarterback. That should be an awesome game."

There are currently some swirling COVID-19 rumors around that top-10 tilt, and one professional bettor told me it could very well be the "Availability Bowl" in which the team that’s closest to full strength comes out on top.

You could almost hear Pearson get queasy over the phone as he reminisced about booking games during the COVID-laden 2020 season. It was a rather common occurrence for a program to announce at the very last minute that double-digit players wouldn't be playing.

Those were chaotic situations for a bookmaker, as a line could move four, five, six points in the blink of an eye as late-breaking information came to the light. I remember Wisconsin opening as a one-point favorite against Michigan, and the Wolverines had a talent exodus in the final hour. The point spread moved all the way to Wisconsin -7.5 … and the Badgers won 49-11.

Situations like that are not ideal for the house.

"Booking through a pandemic, we were all trying to figure out the deal on the fly," Pearson explained. "I had to think a lot more about how much a player was worth to the line. And if an important guy got ruled out at the last minute, you better know who’s behind him. You’re trying to find a routine, but you still might strike out a couple times.

"Luckily, a lot of those COVID games got canceled, which saved us. It takes a little bit of luck and some prayer to book around stuff like that."

As for the national championship betting markets, it should be no surprise that a lot of the heavy hitters carry weight when bettors approach the counter. Pearson’s joint appears to be fine with Alabama or Clemson winning the title, but liability has built up on others.

"Ohio State, Oklahoma and Georgia have gotten the most bites with us," Pearson said. "We’ve taken the most bets on the Buckeyes for sure. That’s the most popular one at our shop. We’ve also seen good action on Iowa State, Notre Dame and North Carolina, too.

"UNC is the most surprising. We opened the Heels up at 75-to-1, and now we’re at 50-to-1. They haven’t really done much in college football this century."

Carolina’s betting hype is clearly correlated with star quarterback Sam Howell, who is projected to be a top-10 pick in the 2022 NFL Draft. Howell is far from the Heisman Trophy favorite — Oklahoma’s Spencer Rattler and Clemson’s DJ Uiagalelei have the shortest odds — but a few decent bets on a player at 20- or 30-to-1 are enough to make the sweat roll down a bookmaker’s neck.

"Sam Howell and Matt Corral are the two guys we have the most liability on," Pearson reported. "We let ‘em bet ‘em at good prices. Those are the two guys we’re looking to dodge. Our players aren’t really betting Rattler and Uiagalelei. Desmond Ridder and D’Eriq King have a couple bets, but Howell and Corral are the ones we’re rooting against."

Pearson and his peers also pay close attention to "sharp" action, which is money wagered from a winning player that historically beats the market. It’s somebody who bets Under 70 when a market opens, only for the point total to close at 65 on Saturday.

"After that UCLA-Hawaii result last week, we saw a lot of ‘Under’ bets come in on LSU-UCLA for this weekend," Pearson explained. "I asked around, and a lot of sharp people were interested in taking that ‘Under’ as well.

"One of the bigger positions has been on Kansas State. We saw some respected groups hit it. We opened Stanford -2 or -3, and it got bet to PK. Then K-State got hit all the way up to -3. That’s a pretty big opinion. That game is really interesting to me altogether."

I refused to let Pearson go without asking him for a Week 1 winner.

"Can I give you two?" Pearson asked.

Of course.

"I’m pretty high on UCLA this season," he admitted. "They get LSU coming to the Rose Bowl, and I think UCLA is a solid bet if you have a +3. (The Bruins are in fact currently 3-point underdogs at FOX Bet.)

"Also, Cal -3.5 against Nevada (+100 at FOX Bet; bet $10 to win $20 total). Justin Wilcox gets almost his whole defense back. He’s such a great defensive coach, and that group will be mean. There’s so much hype on Nevada, too. They’ll probably be good going forward in conference, but in a game like this, I think Cal should be a six or seven-point favorite."

Sam Panayotovich is a sports betting analyst for FOX Sports and NESN. He previously worked for WGN Radio, NBC Sports and VSiN. He'll probably pick against your favorite team. Follow him on Twitter @spshoot.

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