Georgia vs Texas Rematch Most Likely Championship Matchup

It has been a very interesting year in college football. Oregon is the only undefeated team and a couple of those games were very close scrapes. This makes the first year of the expanded 12-team playoffs that much more important. Because the team that would face Oregon in the national championship in previous BCS style matchups is not very clear.

The 12-team playoff will settle all of that. The only real controversy was the seeding. Very obviously better teams missed out on a first round bye because they did not win their conference. But that is just the way it is. If you are truly the championship team you will have to prove it by beating the extra team.

When making our own picks in the BetOnline playoff bracket contest, we ended up choosing Georgia vs Texas. The Longhorns have the easiest path of the first round teams. Should they beat Clemson, which we believe they will do easily, they will then face an outmatched Arizona State team. That should also be a W for Texas as well. Then they will most likely face Oregon or Ohio State. We believe that they should be able to squeak out a win there.

Georgia, even with backup QB Gunner Stockton, should be able to handle everyone on their side of the bracket. In fact, Carson Beck isn’t very good and the team really seemed to rally behind Stockton when he came into their previous game in relief of an injured Beck. Look for Georgia to get back to what they do best, which is play great defense and ground and pound the ball.

After the fact, we looked at match up odds at the sportsbook and found that the odds point to a same matchup in the championship game. When looking at individual Yes/No offerings at the sportsbook as to whether each team will make the playoffs, the odds look like this:

Georgia: Yes +150/No -200
Texas: Yes +180/No -250
Oregon: Yes +190/No -250
Penn State +190/No -250
Ohio State: Yes +275/No -350
Notre Dame: Yes +400/No -575
Indiana: Yes +1600/No -10000
Clemson: Yes +1600/No -10000
SMU: Yes +1600/No -10000
Arizona State: Yes +2000/No -10000
Boise State: Yes +2250/No -9000
Tennessee: Off the Board

As you can see, Texas and Georgia are slight favorites to make it to the big game. If this happens it will be quite a treat because no two D1 teams have ever played each other three times in the same season before. Yale played Wesleyan three times in a season back in the 1800’s. This was well before the establishment of modern divisions and Wesleyan was never considered a football heavyweight. But I digress.

The odds above seem to stand in contrast the the championship futures odds which have Oregon favored to win it all and Georgia being listed down at #4.

Oregon +350
Texas +275
Ohio State +475
Georgia +500
Penn State +600
Notre Dame +750
Tennessee +2500
SMU +4000
Indiana +4000
Clemson +5000
Arizona State +5000
Boise State +6000

Based on our own opinion mixed with what can be extrapolated from these odds, we feel that a Texas vs Georgia matchup is the most likely.