College Football Kickoff: Top Teams and Huddle’s Trading Strategies

To the great joy of many people, college football has basically returned and so is Jake's Takes. That means that Week 0 and Week 1 of the CFB season are right around the corner. We’re here to talk about some of the things we’re most excited about, the teams we want to see, what’s new (Texas in the SEC!), and how Huddle expects this season to go from a trading / pricing perspective. Let’s dive in!

Georgia is my top pick to win it all this year. They have one of the best quarterbacks in Carson Beck, and their defense is stacked again, with Mykel Williams likely being a top-10 draft pick. Plus, Kirby Smart is still leading the team.

Of course, they’ll face tough competition. Alabama returns Jalen Milroe at QB and has a new head coach, Kalen DeBoer. Texas is also a new challenge in the SEC, with another top QB in Quinn Ewers. But I believe the Dawgs are deep and talented enough to win it all.

The Big Ten should be really exciting this year. Oregon looks like a top-5 team, thanks to a lot of new talent from the transfer portal and incoming freshmen. Dillon Gabriel might even look like a Heisman contender on this squad.

USC is another interesting team to watch. They didn’t perform as well as expected last year, but their defense should get better now that they’ve simplified things by moving away from Alex Grinch’s complicated schemes. Miller Moss is still developing, but he had an impressive game against Louisville in his only start last season. It’ll be interesting to see if USC can put it all together this year.

Ohio State is the favorite to win the Big Ten. They have an experienced QB in Will Howard, and Quinshon Judkins could be the best running back in college football. Plus, Ohio State has consistently had one of the deepest wide receiver groups for nearly a decade.

From a Huddle perspective, I went to Huddle College Football Trader Matt Ramey to get his opinions on the upcoming season and trading challenges / thoughts:

What are the pricing features we should expect to see on Huddle products this season?

Matt: We’re expanding significantly this season, with over 300 new markets available—compared to much fewer in the past. We're already testing many of these new markets, using the NFL preseason to explore crossover opportunities with college football. It’s a big challenge, but our team is fully prepared to take it on.

Is there a level of difficulty added for traders with all of the transfer portal additions and subtractions? 

Matt: For the majority of transfers, they’re not super impactful. Mostly, these are guys who were blocked at their previous school, or are now chasing NIL additions.

Take Malachi Nelson, for example. He was a five-star QB who couldn’t start at USC because of Caleb Williams and then lost out to Miller Moss. So, he transferred to Boise State for NIL money… and still didn’t get the starting job.

Some transfers do make a big difference, though. We have a ranking system for those key players, like Dillon Gabriel and Will Howard. But a lot depends on the system they’re stepping into, the coach they’ll be playing for, and other factors. We constantly update our data points to reflect these changes.

Traders focus heavily on live trading inputs, particularly by analyzing each team’s pace, like seconds per play, which feeds directly into our models.

While market dynamics play a big role, having a solid base projection for each team is crucial. We assess how effective we expect each team to be on offense, though this is just one piece of the puzzle. We also measure offensive explosiveness and adjust all offensive and defensive parameters separately.

A significant amount of time is spent ranking these offenses and defenses, then fine-tuning the data to see how they compare against one another.

Any new trends or emerging strategies you expect bettors to try? Will NCAA25 impact anything?

Matt: I expect we’ll see an increase in betting volume on Group of 5 (G5) games, and even smaller matchups, driven by the popularity of NCAA25. The game is likely to get more people involved, especially with the introduction of the 12-team playoff, which will boost excitement and betting opportunities on more widely televised games.

We have some things in mind for atypical strategies - I think we’ll see more load management toward the end of the season where we typically might not, between NIL and DNP - Rest days, with the consolidation of the schedules.

Teams like Texas and Oklahoma will see dogfights every week - something they’re not as used to coming over from the Big 12. I think that we’ll probably see more coaches be more cautious with star players, which creates betting windows on more unknown players. We’ll pay particular attention to how coaches manage during the season with the lead to anticipate where bettors may be looking to find an edge and get in front of it.

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