Georgia Football Odds: Can the Bulldogs Win Another National Championship?

College football has quietly reached a critical moment for the 2023 season.

Regular readers know that I keep a close eye on college football betting odds and the overall CFP picture. When there’s a major shift in the odds, I generally notice within a few hours.

With that in mind, there was a seismic move at the top of the odds table after Week 8, and it demands some close examination.

Georgia Football Odds

Georgia is currently +275 to win the national championship. 

That might sound pretty good to some viewers, but the Bulldogs are trending in the wrong direction. Georgia has a 24-game winning streak – the longest active run in Division I football – and is looking for its third national championship in a row.

After college football’s Week 8 results, Michigan actually jumped Georgia in the college football national championship odds table. The Wolverines (+225) are now considered the favorite, at least as far as football betting is concerned.

Georgia is the only remaining undefeated SEC team, so it’s not surprising that the Bulldogs are a comfortable -185 favorite there. 

Yet even in the conference odds, the team that’s charging – mathematically speaking, anyway – is Alabama. The Tide are +225 in the SEC market and +1400 in the national championship odds. 

Georgia Football Just Isn’t a Juggernaut This Year, And Bettors Know It

College football is terribly biased in a lot of places. One of the most common forms of status quo bias that grips the sport – particularly in seasons like this one – is the “They’re No. 1 until someone beats them” line of thinking.

Georgia remains No. 1 in the polls because the program hasn’t lost a game since the 2021 SEC Championship. Yet that’s hardly a reason to think highly of this specific team, which is pedestrian at quarterback and not quite as great on defense as it has been in recent years.

Georgia All-American TE Brock Bowers is having tightrope surgery on his injured ankle, the school announces, and he’s expected to miss four-to-six weeks.

— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) October 16, 2023

Computer ratings and raw metrics are telling us an early story of Georgia’s 2023 regression toward the pack of other contenders. As of Oct. 23, Jeff Sagarin’s rankings place Georgia fourth, behind Michigan, Ohio State, and Alabama. 

Using those same Sagarin ratings, the Bulldogs have only played three teams ranked among the Division I top 100. 

ESPN’s FPI metric places Georgia eighth nationally, with a 39.4% chance to win its conference and a 30.9% chance to make the College Football Playoff. Alabama currently rates higher in all three categories.

That may not jive with the average college football fan’s understanding of where Georgia is – the populist vision of the Bulldogs is likely more in line with the AP poll, which has now ranked the Bulldogs No. 1 for 19 straight polls, which is the third-longest all-time streak. 

But the gambling markets can’t be fooled. Georgia’s 1-6 ATS mark is among the worst numbers in the entire landscape of college football ATS records, demonstrating how the Bulldogs have consistently underachieved against market expectations. 

Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, LSU, and even Colorado have all spawned more national championship wagers at BetMGM than Georgia. As of Oct. 23, the Bulldogs account for less than 5% of all national championship handle for this season.

Cannot stop thinking about a graphic from late in the JMU/Marshall game last Thursday.

Does, uhh, anyone seem absent here? pic.twitter.com/sf51K1WWmJ

— Chase Kiddy (@chaseakiddy) October 23, 2023

For now, Michigan is the big winner in all of this. The Wolverines have taken over the top spot in the championship odds, but Michigan, too, has a deeply backloaded schedule that’s highly dependent on the results of one or two games. 

Check those odds against teams like Oklahoma or Florida State, whose biggest challenges are now behind them. 

One of the fundamental truths of handicapping is that when marketplace odds don’t align with true odds, that inefficiency creates big value somewhere else in the table. If Georgia really is overrated, and the market is only just realizing it, that means there’s a lot of value somewhere else. 

Bettors who can identify where that value is before the market shifts stand to create a strong position for themselves.