College Football Playoff national championship odds, picks: Our best bets for Miami (FL)-Indiana

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The 12-team College Football Playoff has come down to its final game, as top-seeded Indiana crushed Oregon 56-22 and Miami (FL) held on for a thrilling 31-27 win over Ole Miss in the semifinals.

The Hurricanes already won a game as a big underdog against Ohio State earlier in the CFP, and they'll need to do it again if they want to bring home their first college football title since 2001. On the other side, coach Curt Cignetti has led one of the more improbably turnarounds in college football — and sports — history, as it still feels odd to say that the Indiana Hoosiers are playing for a college football national championship.

Can Miami (FL) pull off the big upset? Will the Hurricanes at least cover the 8.5-point spread?

Our college football handicapping team of Ed Feng and Matt Russell provide a best bet on Monday's CFP title game.

Odds courtesy of BetMGM. This file will be updated.

No. 1 Indiana Hoosiers at No. 10 Miami (FL) Hurricanes (-8.5, 47.5)

Russell: The Hoosiers can win the national title without proving to be an historically great champion, but they can’t cover an 8.5-point spread without reaching that level. That’s how high Indiana’s rating in the betting market has gotten.

We’ve been told, throughout the season, that not only is this a new era of Indiana football, but that we shouldn’t get caught up in the branding of the higher-profile teams they’ve faced like Alabama and Oregon. That was proven to be a fair assessment, but what if the betting market still gave both too much credit?

Many were calling for the Crimson Tide to miss the playoff after their decisive loss to Georgia in the SEC title game, and close wins over Penn State and Iowa somehow earned the Oregon Ducks the coveted 5-seed and a route to the semis with only JMU and an unproven Texas Tech offense in their way. It’s entirely possible that neither Alabama and Oregon are the top-10 teams they were proclaimed to be. If that’s the case, as we’ve seen in the past, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see a blowout in the playoff. Recent history is littered with them.

Indiana’s 3-point win over Ohio State might be its only meeting with a team that will end up rated in the top-5 nationally, until now.

Miami earned its way into the Playoff by beating Notre Dame in Week 1, but they also deserved their 10-seed because of two head-scratching losses. When it comes to assessing the Hurricanes' capability in any given game, the former is more important than the latter, and they’ve shown their class in winning at Texas A&M, beating Ohio State in a similar fashion as Indiana and getting by an Ole Miss team at the top of its game.

We already learned last season that seed doesn’t equal strength. Both No. 7 Notre Dame and No. 8 Ohio State shook off head-scratching losses to make the title game. Indiana doesn’t have one of those, so their power rating in the market has done nothing but rise. Miami, and its handful of NFL first-round talent, can follow in the footsteps of the ‘24 Buckeyes, and fully recover to beat the Hoosiers outright. With a betting line of 8.5 points, though, we’ll leave some room for Indiana to finish its epic season with a championship in a closer game than the experts think, at least.

Bet: Miami +8.5

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Feng: Let's look at how this Indiana team has gotten lucky.

Against Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship Game, two key plays preserved a 3-point win:

Ohio State had a fourth-and-1 conversion overturned by replay. If QB Julian Sayin had kept his knee up a second longer, Ohio State probably scores a TD with a first-and-goal from the 4-yard line.
Ohio State missed a 27-yard field goal attempt.

Against Alabama in the playoff quarterfinal ... never mind, there was no luck in that 38-3 beat down.

In the playoff semifinal, Oregon gifted Indiana 28 points with a pick 6, two fumbles lost and a blocked punt that put the Indiana offense in the red zone. Oregon had a respectable 5.82 yards per play when the Ducks weren't turning the ball over (5.71 YPP was the college football average).

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It's OK to have some luck in dominating your way to the championship game. In reality, Cignetti has done the greatest coaching job in college football history the past two seasons. Let's look at the numbers:

No. 1 in my member rankings by almost 2.5 points over Ohio State.
On offense, No. 1 in adjusted success rate, No. 2 in adjusted yards per play.
On defense, No. 3 in adjusted success rate, No. 9 in adjusted yards per play.

Miami will need to play its best game and get some breaks to have a chance at the upset. My numbers have Indiana by 8.0, so the market seems fair.

Miami RB Mark Fletcher Jr. has been excellent since returning from an injury. Fletcher probably won’t reach the 23 carries he got against Ole Miss because Indiana has a much better run defense and the game script might demand a lot of second-half throws. However, my rushing yards model predicts Fletcher to rush for 4.53 yards per carry after opponent adjustments based on my mathematical algorithms at The Power Rank. Assuming 18 carries, this gives 81.5 rushing yards for Fletcher.

Bet: Mark Fletcher Jr. over 66.5 rushing yards

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