2018-19 College Football Futures: Michigan 5th favorite to win
Given all the "sky is falling" talk on the site after the bowl game, it's interesting to see how a neutral observer rates the strength of Michigan's 2018 football team.
The Top 5 are:
Bama 5-2
Clemson 6-1
Ohio State/Georgia 8-1
Michigan 10-1
January 8th, 2018 at 4:36 PM ^
Lol. Let's start with winning the division first
January 8th, 2018 at 4:39 PM ^
Why? Alabama is showing you can skip that and still win a national title.
January 8th, 2018 at 4:41 PM ^
Ok then - let's win 11 regular season games and start with that.
January 8th, 2018 at 5:08 PM ^
January 8th, 2018 at 5:09 PM ^
January 8th, 2018 at 5:24 PM ^
January 8th, 2018 at 5:58 PM ^
While we can still laugh at Rutgers, they had a better record than:
- Maryland
- Indiana
- Illinois
- Minnesota
...and they had the same record as Nebraska.
January 8th, 2018 at 4:44 PM ^
Well unfortunately we don't have the benefit of the doubt earned by winning championships every other year that Alabama has
January 8th, 2018 at 6:19 PM ^
if we go 11-1 with our only loss to OSU in the The Game next year to lose the division, we'll almost certainly get in the playoff like they did this year (and OSU did last year).
But still, let's just win The Game and the division and the conf.
January 8th, 2018 at 6:30 PM ^
2006 Says Hello
January 8th, 2018 at 6:34 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 8:05 AM ^
This high ranking obviously is based on the assumption that Shea Patterson will be eligible to play next season. That's a mighty big assumption. And given the way the NCAA seems to enjoy screwing Harbaugh, I am very concerned that they won't give him eligibility. What happens to our odds of winning in that case?
January 9th, 2018 at 1:20 PM ^
not sure sure why you are questioning his eligibility. It is clear that the people who would know are confident he plays next year.
January 9th, 2018 at 3:06 PM ^
It's probably more based on our defense. If we just get our offense up to a B then with our offense we'd be a threat for sure to win it all.
To your point, Patterson plays into getting our offense up to decent
January 8th, 2018 at 7:36 PM ^
That is true. Ok I guess winning the division isn't necessary, but teams usually win their division and conference before talking about national championships
January 8th, 2018 at 6:50 PM ^
January 8th, 2018 at 4:40 PM ^
January 8th, 2018 at 4:42 PM ^
January 8th, 2018 at 5:01 PM ^
You realize we're not actually on the team, right?
January 8th, 2018 at 5:22 PM ^
The most useless, tired, obnoxious, pedantic meme on the internet. Please stop.
January 8th, 2018 at 5:34 PM ^
As a fan, am I not allowed to temper my expectations? The solution to being disappointed about our record every January is to lower expectations. What's the harm in that? After all, we aren't on the team
January 8th, 2018 at 5:51 PM ^
You can absolutely temper your expectations--that's fine. Just like I should be able to take hope from an optimistic projection from next season.
As a fan, you should be able do whatever you like. My "we're not on the team" response wasn't speaking to your tempered expectations, it was speaking to your mocking my optimism based on this data point.
January 8th, 2018 at 7:05 PM ^
That's fair. If I can be pessimistic, you have every right to be optimistic. I used to be optimistic; now I just assume the worst and go crazy if something good happens
January 8th, 2018 at 4:36 PM ^
So according to Vegas we should start the season as the #5 team in the country?
January 8th, 2018 at 4:49 PM ^
We're called Michigan, right?
January 8th, 2018 at 5:00 PM ^
I hope this team starts the season in the 20s. A win over ND would start an upward march early.
January 8th, 2018 at 4:39 PM ^
And the "experts" see the talent and depth brought in .....just needs to pop at some point...hopefully they are right and its next year.
Our schedule though
January 8th, 2018 at 4:39 PM ^
Will resemble 2016 with a much harder schedule. If we can get out of South Bend with a W I expect the team to be rolling opponents at 6-0 as we head into our back to back against Wisco and State.
At the end of the day though we'll need to beat 3 out of 4 of Wisco, PSU, MSU and OSU to get in the Championship game.
Bright side is because of the schedule Michigan should be the highest ranked team with X losses, so we shouldn't have to worry about being jumped with 1 loss to a 2 loss ESSCEECEE team.
January 8th, 2018 at 6:15 PM ^
Disagree that the schedule will be much tougher:
- Colorado won their division, they were similar in difficulty to what ND will be next year. The game is on the road, albeit not in an intimidating environment. ND was 10-3 this year but loses a bunch of talent - they're a 4 loss unit next year.
- We get PSU and Wisconsin at home next year - we beat them both at home in 2016, the year they both played in the conference title game.
- We get MSU and OSU on the road - we comfortably won the MSU game, not a difficult environment. We should've beat OSU, our guys know they can play there and our coaches know that they can out coach OSU. The year will come down to that game anyways.
- What is the difficult/trap road game like Iowa was in 2016? Northwestern? They're not a tough team and the crowd will be mostly Michigan fans.
I just don't get this meme that the schedule next year is indominable. I don't view it as being any tougher than our 2016 schedule, during which we were 2 plays away from going to the CFP - not to mention that there will be more talent on the roster next year.
January 8th, 2018 at 6:25 PM ^
Well, we'll be facing a much better MSU team than we did in 2016. Also @ND is harder than Colorado at home. This team has yet to win a big road game under JH, and they'll have 3 of them next year. The schedule doesn't inspire much confidence.
January 8th, 2018 at 6:35 PM ^
Idk if the schedule should inspire confidence, but I certainly don't think the schedule should detract from your confidence in reaching our goals next year. I don't think the 2018 schedule is any less manageable for the 2018 team than the 2016 schedule was for that team, which should have been in the playoffs.
January 8th, 2018 at 7:07 PM ^
I dunno. OSU will be a top 10, possibly top 5 team. MSU will possibly be a top 10-15 team (and even if they aren't they always play like they are against us). That's 2 very tough road games right there. I don't think ND will be a great team but they'll be a good team. Overall that's 3 tough road games. PSU will take a step back but they have a very good QB that can keep them in any game, and Wisconsin is returning a good and experienced QB and a legit Heisman contender at RB. Neither of those games will be easy. Throw in the away game against NW, and even a home game against what should be a greatly improved Nebraska team and we're looking at an incredibly tough schedule. It's very possible, hell even likely, that we lose 2 games which would essentially be a death knell for our playoff hopes without some chaos elsewhere.
January 8th, 2018 at 6:36 PM ^
game being the one that could blow the whole year up, though...
January 8th, 2018 at 6:37 PM ^
@ Notre Dame is more difficult than home Colorado even if ND is a four loss team next year. Home is a lot easier than away.
Then let's talk about MSU. They were 3-9 in 2016. I'm sure the blog reminded you of that at least three times a day between that game and the 2017 tilt (and still about once a day since then). That wasn't a quality win. It was a cakewalk. That will certainly be a much more difficult game.
Iowa wasn't a "trap" game. They weren't good in 2016. We were 22+ point favorites. We just shit the bed in that game. Our non-Wisc West div. games next year are NW and Nebraska which will probably the 2nd and 3rd best teams in that division. That's much better for the resume than 2016 Illinois (terrible) and Iowa (not very good).
Wisconsin is Wisconsin. OSU is OSU.
Maryland and Rutgers will almost certainly be better than they were in 2016. PSU will probably be the only team worse than their 2016 counterpart.
I think we can and should win 10-12 games next year. My point isn't to say that we can't/won't win the division, but it's to say the schedule should look really good by the end of the year.
January 9th, 2018 at 3:28 PM ^
schedule is almost always the least of my worries, and next year is no exception.
when we're good, whether it's at home or on the road flat doesn't matter.
January 8th, 2018 at 4:40 PM ^
I feel like we have this dicussion every year. This is far more about M fans putting a lot of bets on their team than it is Vegas thinking we're a top 5 team.
January 8th, 2018 at 4:42 PM ^
This is a huge part of those odds. We are part of one of the largest and most "homerific" fan bases in existence. I may have just made up the word "homerific" too, but you get the point.
January 8th, 2018 at 10:13 PM ^
January 8th, 2018 at 4:49 PM ^
Do we have the odds from past seasons to compare?
January 8th, 2018 at 4:55 PM ^
Michigan was 14/1. Only Alabama, Ohio State, USC, Florida State (OOPS!), and Oklahoma had smaller odds.
http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/index.ssf/2017/07/updated_odds_have_mic…
January 8th, 2018 at 5:00 PM ^
In 2014, Michigan started the season 100-1 to win the national championship.
January 8th, 2018 at 4:53 PM ^
January 8th, 2018 at 4:52 PM ^
The question becomes who are these people and why are they so intent on pissing their money away?
January 8th, 2018 at 5:07 PM ^
And I feel like many on this blog (like you per this comment) don't understand that while "square" bets make up the majority of the betting volume, the majority of the money bet is by sharps who would hammer an artificially fan-influenced spread.
For example, as I said in this thread, Michigan's 2014 odds were 100-1. If it were "far more about M fans putting a lot of bets on their team", you wouldn't see swings by a factor of 10 on futures odds between the years.
January 8th, 2018 at 5:16 PM ^
Michigan was a shit team in 2014 and the fans knew it, and it was also a pretty low point of enthusiasm for the fanbase.
Your point about moving "spreads" isn't quite applicable. A point spread for a game has bets on opposing sides, which as you noted, will get hammered if they get our of whack . This is taking odds to win something, which isn't the same thing. There isn't really a direct opposing bet to balance this out, other than nobody placing any bets, at which point the odds would drop until people started placing bets. The reverse bet would be odds for Michigan not to win the national championship, which probably isn't going to pay out well no matter what money comes in.
My point is that money is coming in for M at 10-1, so either a.) sharps and squares agree the team will be good and are placing bets at these odds, or b.) people are putting in bets for M to win the national championship and don't care what the odds are.
January 8th, 2018 at 5:30 PM ^
You're right, the futures market is dfferent than an event with a binary outcome (i.e. a game), and due to the higher juice some sharps avoid futures bets altogether, so fan bets will move a futures market more than a game market.
BUT, team strength weighs heavily into this, way more than fan bets. Look at 2017 versus 2018. Before the start of the 2017 season Michigan was 14-1 to win the national championship. That was off a 10-3 season where we lost 3 games by 5 points, and the last 2 in part because of an injured QB. Compare fan enthusiasm after last season to the sentiment lingering after whatever that was in the Outback Bowl.
I agree with you that fan bases influence futures bets to a small degree, but my point is Vegas weighs team strength much more when setting futures lines. Michigan at those short 10-1 odds may not be an exact representation of team ratings, but it's indicative that next year's team is expected to be much better than this year's team. The odds aren't meaningless.
January 9th, 2018 at 8:15 AM ^
Thank you for noting that Vegas sets line they think are accurate, first and foremost.
Vegas does care if bad lines gets hammered to their detriment, but they don't give an F if the people hammer it like fools. If they could move the M line down to 3:2 AND keep the money coming, they'd be over the moon because that's an absolutely stupid number and they're getting absolutely stupid bets on it.
So, I think the 10:1 is the genuine Vegas take on M. Those numbers aren't going to get moved much by bettors unless they think they think they can get people to keep betting a better house value. I'm guessing M backers maybe have a tolerance down to 8:1 (especially as the stink of 2017 wears off and everything turns rainbows and candy canes), but I think anything lower than that kills the action.
January 8th, 2018 at 6:43 PM ^
because casual homerific fans don't bet very much and if the odds are far enough out of whack, the sharps will drill them so hard that they'll move the market to a more reasonable level. There's probably a small effect but it's not huge.
January 8th, 2018 at 4:43 PM ^
January 8th, 2018 at 4:46 PM ^
Questions around the OL. Patterson is not for sure eligible for '18. Growth of WRs. PUNTER. Winning on the road @ MSU, @ OSU.
Too many questions left to be answered to have this team in that conversation.
Hell, we are still figuring out our coaches.