Oddsmakers put Georgia football’s 2025 title chances behind Ohio State, Texas

The confetti had yet to be swept from the turf at Mercedes-Benz stadium Monday night, and already it was time to look forward to the next college football season.

Congratulations, Ohio State Buckeyes. You’re the College Football Playoff national champions. Now, can you do it again? Nice run to the title game, Notre Dame. Was that a one-off for the Fighting Irish?

And then there’s the most important question for Georgia supporters. Can the Bulldogs get back on top?

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As always, I look to oddsmakers and the betting markets for insight. Talk is cheap. The opinions with money behind them carry the most weight. According to the sentiments among that set following Monday’s game, the Bulldogs aren’t one of the top two favorites to win it all for the first time in three years.

Depending on which sportsbook is offering the odds, the early chalk to win next season’s national title is either Texas or Ohio State. The consensus is that Georgia (6-1) is getting the third shortest odds. If that holds after the spring transfer portal, then it would be the first time since 2022 that the Bulldogs weren’t first or second in the preseason odds pecking order.

Georgia’s odds were longer than Alabama and Ohio State before the 2022 season, even though the Bulldogs were defending national champions. Georgia won the championship again in 2022. The Bulldogs haven’t won a CFP game since then. They didn’t make the four-team playoff in 2023 and lost to Notre Dame in the quarterfinals of the first 12-teaam playoff.

Those results leave the Bulldogs with something to prove, again. The steady stream of players going to the NFL finally caught up with Kirby Smart. He’s replenished the roster with elite high school recruits. Smart hasn’t done so well with plugging holes via the transfer portal, especially at the offensive skill positions. That could change after Smart got commitments from two of the top wide receiver transfers for 2025, Zachariah Branch (USC) and Noah Thomas (Texas A&M).

Coach Ryan Day’s success with recruiting from the portal is a big reason the Buckeyes won the national championship. He beat out Smart to land former Alabama and Mill Creek safety Caleb Downs. Downs was a consensus All-American as a sophomore in 2024. Another transfer player, ex-Kansas State quarterback Will Howard, was named most outstanding offensive player for the national championship game.

Day’s success with transfers could be one reason the Buckeyes are favorites to repeat as champs even though a lot of talented players won’t be back. Howard is among 15 starters who are ineligible to return, and as many as 10 Buckeyes underclassmen could declare for the draft. Howard’s likely successor is ex-Alabama quarterback Julian Sayin, a former five-star prep recruit.

Day has a big budget to work with for name, image and likeness deals for recruits. Ohio State athletics director Ross Bjork said last summer that Buckeyes players received about $20 million for their NIL rights. That reportedly was the highest figure in the country.

“People talked a lot about how much money guys were making in NIL and different things like that,” Day said following Monday’s game. “That was just because NIL was available. The majority of our team came back. These guys have been here for a long time.

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“Certainly, Will was a huge addition, Caleb was a huge addition. Don’t get me wrong. But when you hear that number, that doesn’t mean a whole lot other than the fact that the market value for our guys in Columbus at Ohio State is pretty high.”

The other national title contenders will need to keep up. Georgia has made investments. Everett Sports Marketing told On3 Sports in August that the 15 Bulldogs players it represents earned a total of $4.3 million in NIL deals. ESM’s clients include quarterback Carson Beck, who decided to transfer from Georgia to Miami after the Bulldogs lost in the CFP.

Texas is expected to be a national title contender next season in large part because of a top recruit who signed as a freshman and has stuck around. Arch Manning backed up Quinn Ewers for most of the past two seasons. Now Manning, of the famous football family, is set to take over as the starter. He was the No. 1 recruit in the 2023 class and signed with Texas after also considering Alabama and Georgia.

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Smart has a few good candidates in his quarterback group. Gunner Stockton filled in for Beck in the second half of the SEC Championship game and started the Sugar Bowl. Ryan Puglisi was a four-star recruit in the 2024 class. Jaden Rashada was a four-star recruit in the 2023 class. He played three games at Arizona State as a freshman before transferring to UGA.

We’ll see how the rosters for Georgia and the rest of the contenders look after the spring transfer window closes. Right now, the oddsmakers see the Bulldogs as a notch below Ohio State and Texas. If public sentiment stays that way, then it may end up being a good thing for Georgia. The last preseason betting favorite to win the national title was Alabama in 2017.