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, The Profit opened by giving out Georgia (+1000) as its national championship pick. In this unusually top-heavy year — of a sport already long defined by unequal opportunity — no long shot has much of a shot.
Only twice in the past seven years has a team with +1000 odds or longer won the national championship. In the playoff era, no champion has come from outside the top-10 preseason favorites. LSU (2019) was the only winner outside the top five.
Georgia is better positioned than 128 teams to win it all again, but a team returning fewer than half of last year’s starters isn’t going to become the first back-to-back champion in a decade. The road to repeating will begin with more trouble than sportsbooks are suggesting. The opener against Oregon (+17.5) presents a matchup against a coach (Dan Lanning) who spent the past three years running Georgia’s defense, a quarterback (Bo Nix) who spent three years starting in the SEC, an offensive line returning all five starters and other game-changing talent from a team which should return to the Pac-12 title game.
The Wolverines have significant holes to fill after last year’s long-awaited Big Ten title, but Jim Harbaugh’s offense should be even better this season. A loaded offensive line should have little trouble winning almost every battle in the trenches, clearing the way for the best ground game in the Big Ten to put up 300-plus rushing yards.
Greg Schiano’s quarterback competition inspires little belief that last year’s 120th-ranked offense will suddenly achieve respectability. The Eagles have the edge on both sides of the ball, but benefit most with a healthy Phil Jurkovec — a potential first-round draft pick — back under center.
Hopes are unusually — and deservedly — high in Fayetteville with KJ Jefferson and a solid supporting cast back after putting together Arkansas’ best season in a decade.
