2025 College Football Futures Report (Part 1)

THE STRAIGHT BET
2025 College Football Futures Report (Part 1)

College football is back! Ohio State enters as your defending champ and starts off with Texas tomorrow in a huge game. We enter Year 2 of the expanded playoff, and thats impacting action, which I’ll go through below.

This year, I’ve decided to split the report into two so you can get a headstart. Today’s report will go over sharp action. Tomorrow’s will add in the public action/liabilities. We’ll look at the National Title, Conference Title, Heisman, and Team Total markets.

Additionally, with the expansion of prediction markets in the US, we’ll have an entirely different approach to Futures now, and throughout the year, which I’ll also go through below.

We’ll have weekly content and deep dives all over our Twitter and Instagram throughout the year.

Best of luck!

-Anish

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP MARKET

The professional bettors (sharps) are betting on:
🏈 Alabama +1000

The public is on:
🏈 Coming Tomorrow!

The highest liabilities are (in order): Coming Tomorrow!.

CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP MARKETS

ACC

The professional bettors (sharps) are betting on:
🏈 Nothing Notable

The public is on:
🏈 Coming Tomorrow!

The highest liabilities are (in order): Coming Tomorrow.

BIG 12

The professional bettors (sharps) are betting on:
🏈 Nothing Notable

The public is on:
🏈 Coming Tomorrow!

The highest liabilities are (in order): Coming Tomorrow!

BIG TEN

The professional bettors (sharps) are betting on:
🏈 Nothing Notable

The public is on:
🏈 Coming Tomorrow!

The highest liabilities are (in order): Coming Tomorrow!

SEC

The professional bettors (sharps) are betting on:
🏈 Oklahoma +2800
🏈 Ole Miss +1600
🏈 South Carolina +2500
🏈 Texas A&M +1500

The public is on:
🏈 Coming Tomorrow!

The highest liabilities are (in order): Coming Tomorrow!

HEISMAN TROPHY MARKET

The professional bettors (sharps) are betting on:
🏈 Nothing Notable

The public is on:
🏈 Coming Tomorrow!

The highest liabilities are (in order): Coming Tomorrow!

TEAM WIN TOTAL OVER/UNDERS

The professional bettors (sharps) are betting on:
🏈 Nothing Notable

The public is on:
🏈 Coming Tomorrow!

MARKET ANALYSIS

A lot of markets are pretty mixed from a sharp perspective, so there’s not much to report. However, a lot of sharps are waiting to get through Week 1 because there’s a few potential opportunities.

In Week 1, you have three Top 10 matchups (Texas-Ohio State, LSU-Clemson, and Notre Dame-Miami). In the past, the losers of those games would be basically be out. Essentially, they’d need to run the table in order to make the four-team playoff.

However, now with the 12-team playoff, teams can afford to lose a game or two (or even three!), and so the losers aren’t out of it. In fact, there might even be value on them that the sharps could extract. They’re taking a wait and see in regards to what teams lose and if there’s value there. So, I’ll be looking for sharp action on the three losing teams.

So, watch the action next week on the three losing teams.

ACTION PLAN

If you’ve followed BETTR for a bit, you know that I’ve really not been into Futures personally. There were a few reasons for that.

1. Hard to manage. Let’s say Alabama appreciated a bit. With the lack of two-way markets in the traditional sportsbooks, it was hard to capture that equity. You’re at the mercy of whether they win or not.

2. Opportunity cost. Personally, I don’t like tying up my $$ for months at a time without a clean exit. I like my $$ working for me, and, Futures don’t really do that.

However, a few things have changed now that prediction markets have gone mainstream. First, you can exit whenever. You can sell off positions (as I’m typing this, I had sold off my Baylor position in the Baylor-Auburn game at a profit. It’s down to 13% and if I want, I can reenter. And, if I was really paying attention, I could’ve taken something on Auburn simultaneously). So, if I take Alabama, and it appreciates in October, I can sell it off if I want. I don’t need them to win.

Second, some of these prediction markets are having promotions just for depositing $$. For example, Kalshi is offering 4% APY on any $$ deposited with them, even if its in a position. So, let’s say I take a $1K position on Alabama. That $1K would be earning interest.

So, here’s what I’m doing. I’m taking Alabama on the prediction markets. It’s trading at 10 cents per share. If it appreciates, then cool, I’m in the money. I’ll figure out an exit plan. Maybe I’ll let it ride all the way through, Maybe I’ll partially sell it off. Similar to what I did to Baylor earlier. But, I’ll take profit. Think of it like a stock. Alabama is a financial asset that I’m investing in.

Let’s say it depreciates. I might set my “stop loss” at 7 cents a share. So, if it goes down, I’ll get out. This means that if I really want, I can up my unit size. So, let’s say it’s normally $1K. I can put $5K into Alabama, and get out if it goes down to $4K. Let’s say it doubles to 20 cents (aka, to $10K), I can exit there at a 5X my unit size profit. So, I’d be changing the risk-reward ratio.

Ongoing, I mentioned I’ll be figuring out an exit on Bama. But, I’d also be figuring out entrances on other teams. If their “stock” is going up, we can figure out buying opportunities, even if the sharps aren’t on them. Take the Mariners in baseball. On July 31st, they were trading at 3 cents per share. On August 22nd, I got out at 6 cents. As we speak, we’re putting together a bunch of analytics on the website to support this. As we go on, we hope to provide more real-time analytics.

There’s a lot here. Some of it builds on previous newsletter entries. But, we’ll have a deeper dive on this in a separate newsletter. Feel free to ask questions.

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