College Football Bowl Confidence Pool Picks & Predictions

College Bowl Season is upon us, and that means you will soon be contacted by that guy in your office or that casual friend you only hear from once a year to join his bowl pool. We are hoping we can help give you an edge this season with some recommendations for bowl confidence pools based on the current money line odds and the win probability that they imply.

How Do NCAA Football Bowl Confidence Pools Work?

The first step in a confidence pool is picking the team you think will win the matchup outright. Once you have done that for each matchup, as the name implies, you rank each team based on how much confidence you have in them winning. With 41 bowl games on the schedule, a confidence rank of 41 would be given to the team that has the best chance of winning, with the team you feel least confident about given a confidence rank of 1.

It is really that easy! Most casual participants will run down the list of games and pick the team with the better record, or the school with more prestige. More savvy players will include the point spread to make some of their picks, but not many are going to use it down the line, which is where we think we can help. The table below ranks every bowl matchup based on the implied probability that each team will win. The moneyline is the ultimate tool in this situation because it is the closest thing we have to an accurate probability for each team to win. Is it perfect? Of course not! Once the probability starts to fall, there will no doubt be upsets. Our hope is that you can use this information to make more informed picks in your pool.

Pick ‘Em Contests

You can also use this information for so-called Pick ‘Em contests, where you just need to pick the winner of the game outright. As with any pool, you’ll want to shake things up by taking a few upsets here and there, however, don’t go overboard. You want to stick with smaller underdogs and not waste points on a team like Eastern Michigan, who is very unlikely to pull out an upset.

Odds are accurate as of the date this article was last updated. The spreads are bound to change leading up to these games, meaning the probabilities will shift as well. I would recommend waiting as long as you can to submit your picks. We will keep this table updated as lines move so that the recommendations are as accurate as possible all the way until the first game kicks off. Good luck!

College Football Playoff Impact on Confidence Pools

The new playoff bracket format introduces a new spin on confidence pools because not all matchups have been determined. The rules of your specific pool are going to determine how you want to approach this, however, you’ll still want to use the odds to help make your selections.  In general, I’d check the odds to win the College Football Championship and use that as my guide of who to take in those spots. The trick is going to be assigning a confidence value to teams in the playoff because most pools I have seen so far give the confidence points you assign to that team for each round the team wins. That could be a massive advantage if a first-round team ends up winning the whole thing. It introduces a lot of new strategies. This is something we will have to experiment with and see what the best approach might be. Given the potential, it may be best practice to take playoff teams with higher confidence than you might otherwise because of the potential they have to advance and earn more points. Let’s take a look at this season’s odds and see what we should consider.

College Football Playoff Participants & Odds to Win the Championship

Texas +360
Oregon +370
Georgia +475
Ohio State +550
Penn State +600
Norte Dame +800
Tennessee +2500
Boise State +4000
Indiana +4000
SMU +4000
Clemson +5000
Arizona State +6000

Given this information, we’d want to take a hard look at teams like Texas and Ohio State who have pretty good odds to win it all and have additional games because they don’t have a first-round bye. Again, this is entirely dependent on the rules of your pool, but it is something to keep in mind.

2024-2025 College Bowl Confidence Pool Projections

Confidence Favorite Money Line Underdog Bowl Win Prob.
39 Ole Miss -537 Duke Gator 81.78%
38 Florida -449 Tulane Gasparilla 79.29%
37 Texas -446 Clemson CFP Round 1 79.21%
36 Army -435 Marshall Independence 78.97%
35 South Carolina -427 Illinois Citrus 78.55%
34 Alabama -421 Michigan ReliaQuest 78.35%
33 TCU -376 Louisiana New Mexico 76.58%
32 Texas State -376 North Texas First Responder 76.58%
31 Penn State -361 SMU CFP Round 1 75.93%
30 Pittsburgh -343 Toledo Sports 75.05%
29 Oklahoma -323 Navy Armed Forces 73.89%
28 Notre Dame -317 Indiana CFP Round 1 73.68%
27 South Alabama -308 Western Michigan Veterans 73.17%
26 Ohio State -297 Tennessee CFP Round 1 72.52%
25 UTSA -288 Coastal Carolina Myrtle Beach 71.96%
24 James Madison -276 Western Kentucky Boca Raton 71.13%
23 Georgia Southern -268 Sam Houston State New Orleans 70.59%
22 Kansas State -259 Rutgers Rate 69.89%
21 Bowling Green -252 Arkansas State 68 Ventures 69.35%
20 Syracuse -228 Washington State Holiday 67.39%
19 Louisville -217 Washington Sun 66.31%
18 NC State -208 East Carolina Military 65.45%
17 Minnesota -208 Virginia Tech Mayo 65.45%
16 North Carolina -200 UConn Fenway 64.61%
15 Cal -195 UNLV LA 64.04%
14 Missouri -182 Iowa Music City 62.51%
13 Miami -178 Iowa State Pop-Tarts 62.01%
12 Colorado -160 BYU Alamo 59.58%
11 Memphis -153 West Virginia Frisco 58.50%
10 Nebraska -150 Boston College Pinstripe 57.97%
9 San Jose State -146 South Florida Hawai’i 57.45%
8 Arkansas -146 Texas Tech Liberty 57.45%
7 Texas A&M -145 USC Las Vegas 57.17%
6 Miami (OH) -136 Colorado State Arizona 55.67%
5 Northern Illinois -131 Fresno State Famous Idaho Potato 54.77%
4 LSU -131 Baylor Texas 54.77%
3 Georgia Tech -124 Vanderbilt Birmingham 53.52%
2 Liberty -123 Buffalo Bahamas 53.31%
1 Ohio -119 Jacksonville State Cure 52.42%

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