7 Betting Observations After College Football’s Craziest Saturday Ever

Saturday was a truly wild day of college football.

In case you fell into a coma on Friday night, here’s what you missed.

Texas, the team that was undefeated and No. 1 roughly 10 days ago, lost at home to unranked Florida. After the game, head coach Steve Sarkisian only mused to the press that Arch Manning could be benched.

The new No. 1 team, Georgia, lost to unranked Auburn.

Notre Dame lost at BYU, which is a whole conversation by itself. (More on this in a bit.)

Ohio State won its battle of the last two national champions, but quarterback Julian Sayin was injured during the game and appeared on the sideline in a sling at the end. Even when Indiana loses, it might still end up winning?

Alabama lost at Tennessee.

Miami and Utah narrowly avoided upset losses, the former of which needed a very questionable offensive holding call to wipe out a touchdown in double overtime.

Among the stats that emerged from the Week 7 carnage was this gem: This was the first Saturday ever where five of the top seven teams lost on the same day.

With results this turbulent, you could expect a lot of downstream effects in the college football betting markets. And indeed, there have been many adjustments in the book. With so much happening, my guess is that BetMGM will continue to adjust numbers off market action throughout the next one or two weeks.

After combing through all the markets throughout Sunday, I’ve highlighted a few worth paying attention to below.

Some of these may be worth carefully monitoring as the calendar creeps toward November. Others could trigger a bet right now.

Notre Dame Is the New National Championship Favorite

I’m starting with what is surely the craziest change of all. After losing to BYU, Notre Dame is now the new favorite to win the national championship.

Up until now, Ohio State has basically been the outright favorite since Day 1 of the 2026-27 market. But with Sayin’s long-term status unknown, and Ohio State already having lost one game, there is now a ton of risk underneath the Buckeye fundamentals. If Ohio State doesn’t have a quarterback are we even sure Ohio State makes the playoff?

If Ohio State slides back, someone else has to be the new short shot. That team almost certainly would have been Georgia … if the Bulldogs hadn’t lost to Auburn.

But they did, and so the market preference is instead Notre Dame, which is still seen as a team that is incredibly likely to make the College Football Playoff. In this hyper-turbulent climate, that assumed certainty of playoff access makes Notre Dame valuable, even if there are pretty obvious reasons to be skeptical of Notre Dame’s championship potential.

More Fallout From the Julian Sayin Injury

Let’s circle back to the Ohio State dynamic.

The Buckeyes have a well-timed bye this week, so they’ve got two weeks to get ready for their stretch run with a backup quarterback. That final stretch includes road games at USC and Nebraska and home games against Oregon, Northwestern, and Michigan.

If Sayin misses a significant portion of that schedule, Ohio State will be in danger of losing at least two games. Luke Fahey looked like a true freshman in the fourth quarter at Indiana and will need to become a legitimate NCAA starter for Ohio State to hold some ground.

We can’t say for sure whether or not that will happen. This isn’t the NFL, where Ohio State could trade for a starter to fix this problem.

How serious is this problem for the Buckeyes? They’re still -1000 to make the CFP and -125 to win the conference, as of this writing. Should they be?

And what about wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, who’s been an odds-on favorite to win the Heisman for most of the last month. Will he maintain that position if his quarterback can’t throw him the ball?

This is a time to be hunting for midrange candidates and long shots in both markets.

Utah Has Become the Center of the Big 12 – But the Odds Don’t Reflect That Yet

This year’s Big 12 increasingly appears to revolve around BYU and Utah, but the conference market still prices Texas Tech as a 2-to-1 favorite.

This is arguably a stale price at this point that’s overreliant on preseason priors.

I think bettors should take their shot in the futures market with whoever they think will win the Week 10 Holy War showdown.

Georgia’s Championship Odds Have Barely Changed In Absolute Terms

One of the more subtle things I noticed is that Georgia remains at 5-to-1 in the outright national championship market, which is more or less where they were last week. They bounced back and forth between +450 and +500 after the Week 6 win at Alabama.

The fact that Georgia took no substantive change after losing its first game of the season signals that the market still likes the Bulldogs an awful lot. On a Saturday where plenty of teams caught the upset bug, the market appears comfortable with writing the Auburn loss off as just the cost of doing business in the SEC.

There’s a good case that Georgia is still the best team in college football. The lack of a reaction underscores that.

Hunting for Value in the SEC Conference Market

Now that every SEC team has lost a game – with a month and a half of games still left! – the conference race is arguably more open than it’s been in several years. That presents a betting opportunity for fans of the conference futures markets.

As I pointed out in the previous section, Georgia seems to be the obvious choice in spite of the Auburn loss. But the market is going to make you pay dearly to back the Bulldogs. At +110, they’re going off at a price that’s just 10 cents off an official Georgia or the Field dynamic.

So for Georgia skeptics who want to hunt for value, the play here is probably something like Tennessee +1000. The Vols have a manageable schedule going forward that includes games against South Carolina, Texas A&M, and Vanderbilt. The two remaining ranked opponents, LSU and Kentucky, both have to come to Knoxville.

You can grab the Tennessee bet now, and if they make it to the conference championship game, you’ll have an excellent hedging position.

The Playoff Market Is Underreacting to Multi-Loss SEC Teams

When you’ve got two losses in mid-October with a tough schedule left, your playoff hopes are on life support. Teams in this position may have to run the table. If they finish 9-3, they’ll need some luck to get into the 12-team CFP field, assuming they have a chance at all.

So far, 10 wins has been the floor for playoff contention. That can change from year to year, based on how chaotic a season is, but we’ve yet to see a 9-3 team crack the field.

Because of this, I’m a little surprised to see such optimistic prices on Alabama (5-2, 3-2) and Texas (4-2, 1-2) specifically.

As of Oct. 19, Alabama is -220 to make the playoff. The team still has to play the Iron Bowl and go to LSU!

Texas is even more mispriced in my opinion. The Longhorns might have a win in hand against Ohio State, but the Longhorns have games to play against Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Missouri, LSU, and rival Texas A&M. They could legitimately finish 6-6 or 7-5.

Playoff price? +105. They’re -125 to miss the field.

This is probably the best college football bet available in any market right now. Just watch a Texas football game this year. Does that look like a top 12 team to you?

Pac-12 Consolidates Around Boise State vs. Oregon State

If you’re keeping an eye on G6 markets, it’s worth pointing out that the Pac-12 conference odds have all but narrowed to Boise State (-130) vs. Oregon State (+125). Only one other conference team is shorter than 40-to-1.

Boise is the preeminent G6 program that’s expected to make the playoff right now. Oregon State has a surprise Heisman contender and is quickly figuring things out.

Given the two-team dynamic, and the state of the G6 playoff race, there’s a growing case that Oregon State is a strong value bet in the playoff market. If the Beavers win out, including two wins against Boise State, they’d have a good case to jump undefeated James Madison and the rest of the G6 competitors.