September 2, 2022 News and Notes

• Not quite odds-on as I saw at the Tropicana several years back, but Alabama is a +180 favorite to win the CFP title this year.
• And that's only because of Ohio State (+300) and Georgia (+425).
• ESPN Chalk notes that Caesar's Sportsbook has stated that 60% of the CFP futures market this year has come from Alabama and Ohio State.  My guess, from the numbers, is that if you add Georgia, it might be somewhere in the 75% range.
• Alabama, same source, has six times the money than any other team in the land.  So much for any relevant college football this year before the holidays.  If you are looking for a relevant national title race, you are hoping for a lot of Crimson Tide injuries.    
• For only the 15th time since 1978, a team (Alabama in this case) is a double-digit favorite in every game.
• And, worse for any relevant top-level football, both of the major contests for this weekend (#2 Ohio State over #5 Notre Dame and #3 Georgia over #11 Oregon) have the contenders as 17.5 point favorites.
• Argentina has called off all top-level soccer matches for the weekend due to a vice-presidential assassination attempt.
• Serena's run is done.  Three-set loss to Ajla Tomljanovic ended her US Open run.
• South Carolina has cancelled a home and home women's basketball series with BYU over the racist fan incident.
• The College Football Playoff (if the current structure of the sport survives) will have a 12 team playoff starting in 2025-26 -- though they'd like to see it as early as 2024.  
• Four conference champions will be seeded 1-4 and get byes.  Seeds 5-12 will play in the second or third week of December in the first round.  The New Year's Six will rotate the quarters and semis, with the finals at a neutral site as is the case now.
• At least one Group of 5 team will qualify every year.  The top six seeds will be conference champions, meaning that the top Go5 champion will play for the title.  Provided college football survives in present form.  I think it's one of the reasons they'd like to get this off the ground in 2024.