This College Football Team Has the First Win Total of 11.5 Since 2023

With the calendar now reading halfway through July, college football win totals are fully on the brain. Bettors are buying their preferred preseason magazine, studying up on the transfer portal, and evaluating schedule difficulties. 

Every year, I collate all of BetMGM’s college football win totals into an easy-to-read article with charts and numbers. That becomes my main reference point in sifting through the summer’s win total market, which is historically one of my favorite futures markets to bet.

This year, as ever, one or two numbers from the market immediately demand attention. Perhaps nothing jumps out more than the number at the top – the 11.5 win total that only one FBS team has this year. 

And that team is Notre Dame.

I’ve already written about Notre Dame football odds a bit this offseason – namely that quarterback CJ Carr, despite his youth and household name, has been a major Heisman Trophy betting target. 

There’s also the college football national championship odds market, where Notre Dame is very close to the top of the market. Most tellingly, in the College Football Playoff odds market, the Irish are a wild -700 favorite to make the playoff. 

Not only is that the shortest price of any team this year – it’s the shortest preseason price I’ve personally ever seen in a CFP market. 

In the context of those other futures evaluations, it’s less surprising to see the Notre Dame win total sitting at a lofty 11.5. Still, any 11.5 in this market inherently asks the question: Can this team go 12-0?

Let’s put Notre Dame’s schedule front and center. On paper, the Irish have a challenging schedule, with 10 games against power conference opponents, plus a September home game against Rice and a Halloween game against Navy in Boston. 

But a line-by-line look at the schedule reveals that most of the opponents Notre Dame will play are not challenging, regardless of what conference the teams might play in. Key games include Miami (Nov. 7), SMU (Nov. 21), and at BYU (Oct. 17) – the remaining seven “power” opponents are a mash-up of bottom feeders from the ACC and Big Ten. Notre Dame will regularly be favored by 20 points. 

A 6-0 record feels like a formality ahead of the trip to Provo. Notre Dame’s fate as a 12-0 team likely comes down to its grudge match with Miami – the game that ultimately kept the Irish out of the Playoff last year. But I’ll also give the Cougars a nod here as a potential wildcard that could trip Notre Dame up ahead of its rest week. 

It’s worth pointing out how rare 11.5 win totals are. There hasn’t been a consensus 11.5 since 2023, when Georgia football odds were the market zenith. The Bulldogs were seeking a third consecutive national championship. 

There was also Alabama and Clemson, both priced at 11.5 in 2021, coming off a half-decade of dominance above the other 130 teams in the sport. 

Those are the only three examples of 11.5 win totals from the last five seasons. And of those, only Georgia ran the table with a 12-0 record. (The Bulldogs subsequently lost to Alabama in the SEC championship and missed the playoff entirely, helping to spawn the current 12-team CFP.)

So Notre Dame is in rare air, staring down an 11.5 win total. It’ll be in even rarer territory if it runs the table as a 12-0 team.

Then again, Alabama and Georgia never had a schedule quite this easy. So if you like Notre Dame, the time to bet the Over 11.5 is now, when the over is currently priced at +150. Mathematically, you’d probably rather have that than a two-game moneyline parlay backing Notre Dame to beat both Miami and BYU. Based on what we know now, the Irish will be the expected favorite in both games, and the two-leg parlay odds likely won’t be as rich in October as the +150 is right now.