Ohio State football: Oddsmakers favor Buckeyes by a lot
By Del Barris
The Ohio State football team has owned the Big Ten over the last few years. Oddsmakers have them favored again.
Ohio State is the best football program in the Big Ten. I say that with all confidence. They’ve won four straight conference championships. During that four-year run, they’ve won the Cotton, Rose, and Sugar Bowls, gone to the College Football Playoff twice, and played for the national championship last season. They are not just the best football program in the Big Ten, they are by far the best football program in the Big Ten. Oddsmakers more than agree.
WynnBET has installed the Buckeyes as 2/3 favorites to win the Big Ten. Wisconsin comes next at 8/1. That’s a huge gap. A canyon-sized gap. Here’s some perspective. If this was a horse race, the Buckeyes are Secretariat charging down the front stretch of the Belmont Stakes 31 lengths in front of the rest of a field who knows they’ve been racing for second since the starting gate opened. To say Ohio State is heavily favored to win a record fifth-consecutive conference championship is an understatement.
The gap between Wisconsin and the next seven teams is not all that much. Michigan and Penn State are listed at 17/2 (that works out to 8 ½ /1), while Iowa is 11/1. Indiana and Northwestern are both 12/2; Nebraska is 14/1. Then comes a bit of a gap to Minnesota at 20/1. It is then a long way back to Michigan State, Purdue, and Rutgers at 50/1, and another large gap to Maryland, which is listed at 80/1. Illinois rounds out the field at 100/1.
The two biggest surprises to me are Indiana listed as only fourth in the Big Ten East after a good showing in 2020 and Nebraska being listed ahead of Minnesota, which is considered one of the up-and-coming programs in the conference.
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As Secretariat was beginning to destroy the field of four other horses that June day in 1973 (watch that race here), track announcer Chick Anderson exclaimed, “He is moving like a tremendous machine.” The Ohio State football team has become the Big Ten’s tremendous machine. It’s not even close. It’s not even debatable.