Iowa State football: Cyclones have 1000-1 shot to win national championship
By Brian Spaen
Win totals haven’t yet been released for either Iowa school at offshore sportsbooks, but odds for a national championship are alive and kicking. Believe it or not, Iowa State is far from having the worst odds to win it all this year.
5Dimes currently have the Cyclones listed at +100000, which is the exact same line that Kentucky (2-10 last year) and California (1-11 last year) are at.
What the hell does that exactly mean? In layman’s terms, that’s a 1000/1 shot to win it all, or a .1 percent implied probability that it will happen.
To break it down even further, it’s much worse odds than putting down $1,000 on a horse with a 30/1 shot that John took to get Noreen through college in Stealing Harvard, but much better odds than Lloyd’s chances to be with Mary in Dumb and Dumber (1,000,000/1).
It’s not the worst odds to win it all, however. Kansas and former Big 12 school Colorado have 2000/1 odds, three Big Ten superpowers (Purdue, Rutgers, Indiana) have worse odds than Iowa State, and Temple has the worst odds, sitting alone at 4000/1.
This list mostly consists of schools from bigger conferences, the reason being why Iowa State is sitting as one of the bottom 13 teams.
In complete contrast, Florida State (+520) and Alabama (+750) are the lone teams in triple-digits at the top. Ohio State and Auburn are next (+1300), then Oregon (+1350), then the Big 12’s first team on the list, Oklahoma (+1700).
The next best team in the Big 12 is Baylor (+2800), followed by Texas (+6300), and then Oklahoma State (+12500), who all look to have the best chances to win the conference this year.
Iowa State doesn’t have a dog in the fight for Heisman (unless Grant Rohach throws for 1,000 yards against NDSU, Kansas State, and Iowa), but the Big 12’s favorite will obviously be Baylor’s Bryce Petty (+1050). He’ll be lumped in with the other big three — Jameis Winston (+400), Marcus Mariota (+700), and Braxton Miller (+750) — who all have the best odds to win it right now.
Alabama’s T.J. Yeldon (+1500) is currently the favorite at running back.
So Vegas has next to zero confidence that the Cyclones will be sniffing a national title when somebody could be a millionaire just by dropping a grand on Iowa State’s chances to win it all. But if there’s any silver lining, Auburn had the same odds of winning it all last year.