Odds to Make the 2019 College Football Playoff: Alabama/Clemson IV?

• Alabama and Clemson are odds-on favorites to make the 2019 College Football Playoff.
• A furiously competitive Big Ten will send someone, but who?

Odds have been released to make the 2019 College Football Playoff, and the odds sheet is an interesting read. While Alabama and Clemson are obvious favorites, it’s clear that competition in the Big Ten will be fierce, and that the PAC-12 is considered an outside shot.

Odds to Make the 2019 College Football Playoff

Alabama’s the favorite, and for good reason: the Crimson Tide have made every iteration of the Playoff, won twice, and proved last year that even a late loss to Auburn and missing the conference championship game wouldn’t keep them out.

Clemson are considered very likely to make the Playoff for the fourth year in a row. They have perhaps the easiest path to the Playoff: they don’t have Miami on the schedule, Florida State is rebuilding in its first year under Willie Taggart, and Louisville lost both its best player and its #1 fan, albeit for different reasons.

If the Tigers can handle their business, they’ll be favorites in every game on their schedule and will assemble a brand-heavy resume come selection time.

Michigan is quietly creeping into contender status. With a roster built to peak in 2018, and the addition of Shea Patterson at quarterback, Jim Harbaugh might finally have the team he needs to deliver what Wolverine fans hired him for.

Getting there will almost certainly require beating Ohio State in The Game, which is quickly becoming one of the most important games of the season.

How These Odds Compare to National Title Odds

From our National Championship Odds tracker:

The interesting thing is how these odds compare to each team’s odds to win the title, and what those numbers imply. Making the Playoff is part of winning the title, so by telling us how likely they think each of those events is, they’re telling us how likely each team is to win a Playoff.

Think of it this way: Your probability of winning the title is your probability of making the playoff multiplied by your probability of winning that playoff.

p(Win Title)=p(Make Playoff)*p(Win Playoff)

Which you can turn into this:

p(Win Playoff)=p(Win Title)/p(Make Playoff)

For example, Alabama is +200 to win the title and -250 to make the Playoff. Those numbers carry the expected probabilities of 33% and 71%, so oddsmakers figure that Alabama has a 46% chance of winning whatever Playoff happens.

Interesting fact: odds say that Georgia is more likely to win a Playoff than Ohio State. Perhaps because that would likely mean eliminating SEC conference-mate Alabama, or perhaps because Ohio State got blanked by Clemson in the 2016 Fiesta Bowl.