College Football Championship Odds: Kiffin's LSU Doubled In One Night

The Quick Answer

LSU beat Clemson 51-10 on Saturday night and the Kalshi college football championship odds did one thing in response: it doubled LSU, from a 5-cent bid at kickoff to 10 cents by midnight, on roughly half a million contracts in 24 hours, and left almost everything else where it was. Ohio State still carries the top price at 12 cents bid and 13 asked. Oregon and Georgia each gave back a cent, and Notre Dame's bid slipped one. Thirty-eight of the 50 midpoints sit exactly where they did on August 22, when eight AI models priced this board without seeing it and put LSU at 2.5 percent. What one blowout is worth at 10 cents, which contracts paid for it, and why the 10-cent bid was 28 contracts deep at one point Sunday night are below, along with the full 50-team board and every seat's number.

What Doubling Off One Result Is Worth

Start with the game, because the market did. Clemson kicked a 49-yard field goal in the game's first two minutes and never scored again until three minutes were left. LSU answered with a field goal, a one-yard Dilin Jones run, and a 30-yard interception return by Jordan Ross, and led 17-3 after one quarter. Quarterback Sam Leavitt ran for two more touchdowns before halftime, from 8 and 13 yards, and it was 31-3 at the break. He finished 16 of 28 for 230 yards with a touchdown and an interception, plus 12 carries for 113 yards, and Winston Watkins Jr. caught seven passes for 110 yards. LSU produced 644 yards of offense and 38 first downs. Clemson, with Christopher Vizzina starting at quarterback, managed 145 yards and eight first downs, was sacked four times, and got its lone touchdown on an 11-yard David Eziomume run with 3:13 to play.

Now the tape. The last LSU print before the 9:40 p.m. ET kickoff was 5 cents, and buyers had spent the whole day there. About 195,000 contracts changed hands on Saturday before the game, nearly all of it at 4 or 5 cents, and nearly all of it with the buyer taking the price. Then the market started walking. Six cents printed for the first time at 10:14 p.m., seven at 10:52, eight at 11:10, nine at 11:26, and 10 cents at 11:59 p.m. Between kickoff and a quarter past one roughly 396,000 contracts traded, and the buyer was the aggressor on 99.5 percent of them. The single biggest fill of the night, 47,037 contracts at 10 cents, hit at 12:44 a.m. with the outcome long since decided. Six cents was the busiest level, about 144,000 contracts. Most of the money got in there, before the second half made the move obvious.

Ten cents on a contract that pays a dollar reads as roughly one chance in ten, before the exchange's spread. On this board the spread is not small. Add the midpoint of all 50 contracts and you get 123 cents rather than 100, so LSU's 11-cent midpoint, between the 10-cent bid and the 12-cent ask, rescales to about 8.9 percent of the board. Hold that against the panel's 2.5, and against what the win actually proved.

Here is the honest version of what it proved. Clemson was never priced as a contender. Its own contract on this board sat at no bid and a 1-cent ask on Friday, and it sits there tonight, with about 1.17 million contracts offered at a penny and nobody bidding. The market did not double LSU because it beat a team it respected. It doubled LSU because of how LSU looked doing it: a quarterback who ran for 113 yards, a defense that scored and sacked Clemson four times, and a coaching staff in its first game together that hung 51 on a Power Four opponent. On our college football betting shows the first question after a blowout is always the same: who was the opponent's quarterback, and what does the schedule otherwise look like. Vizzina and a Clemson offense that gained 145 yards is not a resume. LSU hosts Louisiana Tech on September 12 and then goes to Ole Miss on September 19, Kiffin against the program he left, and that is the game that decides whether 10 cents was a price or a mood.

Which is why the panel's number matters more now than it did in August. Eight models, price-blind, put LSU at 2.5 percent on a card that told them Lane Kiffin had left a 13-2 Ole Miss team for a 7-6 LSU team. The market now says 8.9. That 6.4-point gap is the widest on the board, wider than the Notre Dame gap that was the widest on August 22. LSU is where the panel's college football record will be made or lost first.

Who Paid For It

On a tight board, a 5-cent LSU move should come with money leaving other teams, because at most one of these 50 contracts pays. This board did not behave that cleanly, and the difference is the most useful thing on this page.

Since the August 22 read, six contracts moved up by the midpoint: LSU by 5.5 cents, Miami by 2, and Indiana, Oklahoma and USC by a cent each, with Ole Miss up half a cent. Six moved down: Oregon, Georgia, Texas A&M, Alabama and Michigan by a cent each, and Notre Dame by half a cent, its bid a cent lower and its spread a cent wider. Add it up and the board gained 11 cents and gave back 5.5. The sum of midpoints went from 117.5 to 123. The market financed half of the board's 11 cents of gains by taking a penny from five teams and a half from a sixth, and printed the rest as a fatter spread.

The weekend moves tell the same story at higher resolution. Oregon closed Friday at 12 cents and sits at 9 bid, 10 asked after a 34-27 escape against Boise State. During the second half of that game the Oregon contract printed as high as 23 cents and as low as 5 inside a single hour. The high prints were about 1,100 contracts in total, the single 23-cent print just 13, and the selling that took it down to 5 cents an hour later was about 6,400 contracts, which is what a thin book does when a favorite is in trouble. Georgia beat Tennessee State 63-3 and still went from 10 to 8 bid, 9 asked. Notre Dame closed Friday at 13 and took a 36,400-contract seller at 9:43 a.m. Sunday, one order that walked the price from 12 down to 10 in 49 fills, hours before it kicked off against Wisconsin at Lambeau Field. Ohio State beat Ball State 56-3 and did not move. Texas beat Texas State 59-7 and did not move. Indiana beat North Texas 52-16 and traded a cent either side of 10.

Then there is Michigan, which is the second-busiest contract of the weekend and the strangest. Michigan beat Western Michigan 13-12. The last 2-cent print was at 9:58 p.m. Saturday, and the price had already slipped to a penny by 10:10. Three hours into the game, at 10:31 p.m., one seller dumped 144,790 Michigan contracts through the penny bid in five fills. Twenty-four minutes later a buyer took 129,697 contracts at that same penny. Another 91,700 or so got bought at 1 cent at 12:20 p.m. Sunday. Roughly 400,000 Michigan contracts traded in 24 hours, more than any team on the board except LSU, and the price is 1 bid, 2 asked. One seller dumped 144,790 at a penny and another buyer took 129,697 back at that same penny inside 24 minutes: two large orders disagreeing about a 13-12 win at the same price. It is worth remembering the next time a penny move on a big-name contract looks like a signal.

The Board

Every listed program, with Kalshi's bid and ask, the change in the midpoint since August 22, and the eight-model panel's blended number from that date. Prices as of Sunday, September 6, 2026, 10:22 p.m. ET, with Notre Dame-Wisconsin and Ole Miss-Louisville in progress at that snapshot. AP ranks are from the August 17 preseason poll, in which USC and BYU tied for 14th; records are 2025 results including the postseason. The panel column is frozen on purpose: it was scored price-blind on August 22 and gets graded as written.

Team	2025	Kalshi bid / ask	Since Aug 22	Panel (Aug 22)
Ohio St. (AP 1)	12-2	12¢ / 13¢	unch.	13.9%
Notre Dame (AP 4)	10-2	11¢ / 13¢	−0.5¢	7.1%
Texas (AP 5)	10-3	11¢ / 12¢	unch.	8.4%
LSU (AP 11)	7-6	10¢ / 12¢	+5.5¢	2.5%
Oregon (AP 2)	13-2	9¢ / 10¢	−1¢	10.5%
Indiana (AP 6)	16-0	9¢ / 10¢	+1¢	6.0%
Miami (FL) (AP 7)	13-3	9¢ / 10¢	+2¢	4.9%
Georgia (AP 3)	12-2	8¢ / 9¢	−1¢	10.3%
Oklahoma (AP 10)	10-3	3¢ / 4¢	+1¢	3.0%
Texas Tech (AP 12)	12-2	3¢ / 4¢	unch.	2.1%
Texas A&M (AP 8)	11-2	2¢ / 3¢	−1¢	4.3%
Alabama (AP 13)	11-4	2¢ / 3¢	−1¢	3.2%
Ole Miss (AP 9)	13-2	2¢ / 3¢	+0.5¢	3.0%
USC (AP 14, Tied)	9-4	2¢ / 3¢	+1¢	1.7%
Michigan (AP 16)	9-4	1¢ / 2¢	−1¢	1.5%
Tennessee (AP 20)	8-5	1¢ / 2¢	unch.	1.3%
Penn St. (AP 18)	7-6	1¢ / 2¢	unch.	1.1%
Florida	4-8	1¢ / 2¢	unch.	0.4%
BYU (AP 14, Tied)	12-2	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	1.5%
Washington (AP 17)	9-4	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	1.1%
Utah (AP 21)	11-2	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	1.0%
Clemson	7-6	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.9%
SMU (AP 19)	9-4	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.9%
Iowa (AP 22)	9-4	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.7%
Houston (AP 23)	10-3	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.6%
Missouri (AP 25)	8-5	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.6%
Louisville (AP 24)	9-4	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.6%
Illinois	9-4	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.4%
Arizona	9-4	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.4%
TCU	9-4	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.4%
Virginia	11-3	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.3%
Vanderbilt	10-3	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.3%
Pittsburgh	8-5	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.3%
Georgia Tech	9-4	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.3%
Auburn	5-7	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.3%
South Carolina	4-8	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.3%
North Carolina St.	8-5	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.2%
Virginia Tech	3-9	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.2%
North Texas	12-2	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.2%
Kansas St.	6-6	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.2%
Florida St.	5-7	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.2%
California	7-6	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.2%
James Madison	12-2	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.2%
Tulane	11-3	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.2%
Arizona St.	8-5	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.2%
Baylor	5-7	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.2%
Kentucky	5-7	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.2%
Oklahoma St.	1-11	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.1%
Miami (OH)	7-7	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.1%
Arkansas	2-10	0¢ / 1¢	unch.	0.1%

The row to sit with is LSU against Oregon. A 7-6 team that has played one game now carries a bid a cent above a 13-2 team that has also played one game, and the panel had them 8 points apart the other way. Thirty-two of the 50 rows still show no bid and a 1-cent ask, the same 32 as August 22, and on those rows there is a listing but not a price. New to how these markets settle? Our guide to college football on Kalshi walks through each market family.

The board is not thin at the top, and it is getting deeper. Across all 50 contracts the screen showed about 25.8 million contracts of lifetime volume with roughly 22.9 million still open, up from 14.7 million and 12.9 million on August 22. LSU alone holds about 2.34 million of that open interest, the most of any team and roughly one contract in ten on the whole board. The next-largest, Oklahoma at about 2.08 million, is a 3-cent team.

Where The Book Is Thinnest

The headline says LSU is a 10-cent team. The order book says something narrower. At 10:08 p.m. Sunday the highest LSU bid was 10 cents for exactly 28 contracts. Behind it sat 8,709 contracts at 9 cents, 2,054 at 8, and 16,747 at 7. On the other side, sellers had 149,882 contracts offered at 12 cents and another 50,100 at 13. Anyone who wanted to sell LSU at the price everyone was quoting could do it for 28 contracts; after that the price was 9, and after 8,700 more it was 8. Anyone who wanted to buy at 12 could take 150,000 without moving the market a cent. A quarter of an hour later, at 10:22 p.m., the 10-cent bid had been rebuilt to 4,616 contracts and the lone 11-cent offer had been lifted, leaving 10 bid, 12 asked, with 144,742 contracts still offered at 12. Buyers keep refilling the bid a few thousand contracts at a time, and the sellers two cents above them do not budge.

That asymmetry already got tested twice on Sunday. At 7:56 a.m. one seller hit the book with a single order of about 15,600 contracts and walked LSU from 10 cents to 5 in the same millisecond, filling about 9,100 of them at 6 cents and 4,900 at 8. By 8:15 a.m. buyers had lifted it back to 10, and 11 cents printed for the first time at 8:46 a.m. At 1:44 p.m. another seller put roughly 5,000 contracts through the book and pushed the low print to 6 cents before it refilled again. Both times the price snapped back within minutes, and both times a modest order took roughly half the price off a contract that had just traded roughly half a million contracts in a day. Volume is not depth. LSU has the most money on the board and a bid that has to be rebuilt every time somebody leans on it.

Compare the contracts the market is actually willing to defend. The deepest bid on the whole board above a penny belongs to a 3-cent team: Texas Tech, which has 503,055 contracts bid at 3 cents and has not moved a midpoint since August. Among the contenders priced above a nickel, Indiana has 130,378 contracts bid at 9 cents, the deepest of that group. Ohio State has 22,992 at 12. Texas has 8,790 at 11. Notre Dame, the co-favorite two weeks ago, has 2,636 contracts bid at 11 cents and 243,047 offered at 13, the shape of a contract the crowd will sell all day and defend only reluctantly. Against that, LSU's 10 cents is less a price than a place buyers keep returning to. The sellers are stacked two cents above it and the buyers are stacked a cent to three cents below, and the number in the headline lives in the gap.

If you would rather price LSU one Saturday at a time than for January, the sportsbook side of the question is on the live odds screen, where you can shop the number across every major book, and our free expert picks today cover the college card each week.

Every Seat's Number

The same board with all eight seats shown, as they scored it on August 22. The de-vigged column rescales that day's market midpoints so they add to 100, which is the fair way to compare a price against a probability. The blend is the median of the eight seats after a revision round. Live prices are in the board above.

Outcome	Kalshi (Aug 22)	De-vigged (Aug 22)	Panel	ChatGPT	Claude Fable	Claude Opus	Claude Sonnet	Gemini Pro	GLM	Kimi	DeepSeek
Ohio St.	12.5¢	10.6%	13.9%	14.0%	13.8%	13.7%	15.9%	14.5%	13.8%	13.0%	14.8%
Oregon	10.5¢	8.9%	10.5%	10.2%	10.3%	10.7%	10.9%	11.0%	10.2%	10.0%	11.6%
Georgia	9.5¢	8.1%	10.3%	10.0%	10.3%	10.2%	10.9%	11.5%	10.2%	10.0%	11.6%
Texas	11.5¢	9.8%	8.4%	8.2%	8.4%	8.2%	8.5%	9.0%	8.5%	8.0%	8.5%
Notre Dame	12.5¢	10.6%	7.1%	6.8%	6.9%	7.2%	7.5%	6.5%	7.1%	7.0%	7.4%
Indiana	8.5¢	7.2%	6.0%	6.1%	6.4%	6.2%	6.0%	5.5%	4.9%	6.0%	5.8%
Miami (FL)	7.5¢	6.4%	4.9%	4.9%	4.9%	5.2%	5.0%	4.5%	4.5%	5.0%	4.8%
Texas A&M	3.5¢	3.0%	4.3%	4.2%	4.4%	4.3%	4.2%	4.5%	4.5%	4.5%	4.2%
Alabama	3.5¢	3.0%	3.2%	2.8%	3.4%	3.5%	2.8%	4.0%	2.7%	3.0%	3.7%
Oklahoma	2.5¢	2.1%	3.0%	3.3%	2.9%	3.3%	3.0%	3.5%	1.5%	3.0%	2.1%
Ole Miss	2.0¢	1.7%	3.0%	2.9%	2.9%	3.0%	3.0%	2.5%	4.0%	3.5%	3.2%
LSU	5.5¢	4.7%	2.5%	2.2%	2.9%	2.6%	2.5%	2.5%	2.7%	2.5%	2.6%
Texas Tech	3.5¢	3.0%	2.1%	1.9%	2.5%	2.8%	2.3%	2.0%	0.9%	2.5%	1.6%
USC	1.5¢	1.3%	1.7%	2.0%	2.0%	2.2%	1.8%	1.5%	1.6%	1.5%	1.1%
BYU	0.5¢	0.4%	1.5%	1.7%	1.8%	1.6%	1.6%	1.5%	1.0%	1.5%	0.8%
Michigan	2.5¢	2.1%	1.5%	1.6%	1.5%	1.5%	1.5%	1.5%	2.2%	2.0%	1.6%
Tennessee	1.5¢	1.3%	1.3%	1.4%	1.3%	1.3%	1.0%	1.0%	2.0%	1.5%	0.8%
Penn St.	1.5¢	1.3%	1.1%	1.2%	1.3%	0.9%	1.1%	1.0%	2.5%	1.2%	1.1%
Washington	0.5¢	0.4%	1.1%	1.0%	1.0%	1.2%	1.2%	1.0%	1.8%	1.5%	1.1%
Utah	0.5¢	0.4%	1.0%	1.1%	1.0%	1.1%	0.9%	1.0%	1.2%	1.0%	1.1%
SMU	0.5¢	0.4%	0.9%	1.1%	0.9%	0.8%	1.0%	1.0%	0.7%	1.0%	0.5%
Clemson	0.5¢	0.4%	0.9%	1.6%	0.9%	0.9%	0.5%	0.8%	1.3%	0.6%	0.8%
Iowa	0.5¢	0.4%	0.7%	0.8%	0.5%	0.7%	0.7%	0.8%	0.4%	0.8%	0.5%
Houston	0.5¢	0.4%	0.6%	0.7%	0.6%	0.6%	0.6%	0.8%	0.3%	0.8%	0.7%
Missouri	0.5¢	0.4%	0.6%	0.8%	0.6%	0.6%	0.5%	0.6%	1.1%	0.6%	0.5%
Louisville	0.5¢	0.4%	0.6%	0.9%	0.6%	0.6%	0.6%	0.5%	1.2%	0.8%	0.5%
TCU	0.5¢	0.4%	0.4%	0.6%	0.4%	0.4%	0.4%	0.3%	0.8%	0.5%	0.5%
Illinois	0.5¢	0.4%	0.4%	0.5%	0.3%	0.5%	0.3%	0.3%	0.4%	0.4%	0.5%
Florida	1.5¢	1.3%	0.4%	0.6%	0.7%	0.4%	0.4%	0.2%	0.3%	0.5%	0.3%
Arizona	0.5¢	0.4%	0.4%	0.4%	0.3%	0.3%	0.4%	0.4%	0.4%	0.5%	0.3%
Vanderbilt	0.5¢	0.4%	0.3%	0.4%	0.3%	0.4%	0.3%	0.3%	0.2%	0.5%	0.5%
Georgia Tech	0.5¢	0.4%	0.3%	0.4%	0.3%	0.3%	0.2%	0.3%	0.4%	0.4%	0.3%
South Carolina	0.5¢	0.4%	0.3%	0.4%	0.4%	0.3%	0.3%	0.3%	0.3%	0.4%	0.2%
Virginia	0.5¢	0.4%	0.3%	0.3%	0.2%	0.2%	0.3%	0.2%	0.3%	0.3%	0.5%
Auburn	0.5¢	0.4%	0.3%	0.2%	0.3%	0.3%	0.1%	0.2%	0.3%	0.3%	0.2%
Pittsburgh	0.5¢	0.4%	0.3%	0.3%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.3%	0.5%	0.2%	0.3%
Florida St.	0.5¢	0.4%	0.2%	0.3%	0.3%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%	0.3%	0.2%
North Carolina St.	0.5¢	0.4%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.3%	0.6%	0.2%	0.3%
Arizona St.	0.5¢	0.4%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.3%	0.2%	0.2%
Virginia Tech	0.5¢	0.4%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.3%	0.3%	0.2%
Kansas St.	0.5¢	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.3%	0.4%	0.2%	0.2%
Tulane	0.5¢	0.4%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%	0.3%	0.3%
James Madison	0.5¢	0.4%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%	0.4%	0.3%
Kentucky	0.5¢	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%
Baylor	0.5¢	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.4%	0.2%	0.2%
California	0.5¢	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%
North Texas	0.5¢	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%
Oklahoma St.	0.5¢	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.0%	0.3%	0.2%	0.2%	0.1%
Arkansas	0.5¢	0.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%
Miami (OH)	0.5¢	0.4%	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%

Every seat on this panel is graded against real market settlements — records to date: GPT 86% on 8,999 graded calls · Gemini 87% on 7,680 graded calls · Claude Fable 90% on 2,256 graded calls · Claude Opus 90% on 2,378 graded calls · Claude Sonnet 88% on 2,355 graded calls · GLM 84% on 3,557 graded calls · Kimi 86% on 3,836 graded calls · DeepSeek 84% on 3,630 graded calls. Recomputed daily; the full scoreboard is public.

That percentage is the share of each seat's settled calls our public grading rules scored correct, recomputed daily across every market the panel has ever priced. No college football national title contract on that ledger has settled yet. This board is one of the first the panel priced and it settles last, in January, which means the panel's college football record gets written in public across the whole season, and after one weekend the seats are furthest from the money on the same row: LSU, where every one of the eight scored between 2.2 and 2.9 percent.

Model estimates generated August 22, 2026, price-blind. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice or trading advice. Models are frequently wrong, and the market price reflects real traders' money. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange; 18+, availability varies by state. Every number here gets graded in public once this market settles, on the full graded scoreboard.

More live boards from the same panel: college football playoff qualifiers, where the same win has LSU at 52¢ bid, 57¢ asked to reach the 12-team field as of 10:20 p.m. ET Sunday · an undefeated regular season · the Heisman board, where Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr opened the season as the favorite · every Kalshi college football board, scored weekly.

The Brand Premium Just Got A Receipt

In the August edition of this page, LSU was the strangest price on the board for a different reason. A 7-6 team sat eighth at 5.5 cents, ahead of Alabama, Texas A&M, Ole Miss and the entire Big 12, and carried more open interest than anyone. The explanation was a hire: Lane Kiffin left a 13-2 Ole Miss team for a 7-6 LSU team, and the market repriced the coach rather than the rosters. Ole Miss, now under Pete Golding, traded at a cent bid and 3 asked.

The panel took the other side of that trade on a card fact rather than a hunch:

"Card facts that moved me: the coaching churn (Kiffin to LSU, Golding inheriting 13-2 Ole Miss, Whittingham at Michigan, Campbell at Penn State). First-year staffs rarely win titles, so I shade Ole Miss, Michigan and Penn State below their poll slots and keep LSU at parity with Ole Miss rather than above."

— Claude Fable

The blend followed: Ole Miss 3.0 percent, LSU 2.5. Two weeks later the market has doubled down on the premium and the panel's first-year-staff discount is 6.4 points underwater on LSU alone. Ole Miss, meanwhile, led Louisville 17-16 in the third quarter in Nashville as this board was pulled, still 2 bid, 3 asked. The first-year staffs the panel shaded all opened the same way: Michigan under Kyle Whittingham needed a 13-12 escape, and Penn State under Matt Campbell beat Marshall 45-0 and stayed at 1 bid, 2 asked. One game is not a verdict on any of them. It is the first entry in a ledger the panel agreed to be graded on.

Indiana Went 16-0 And The Market Still Moved On

The defending champion remains the most interesting price on this board because of how ordinary it is. Indiana finished 16-0 and beat Miami 27-21 in the championship game on January 19, 2026, the first national title for a program that carried more all-time losses than any other in the sport when Cignetti took the job. Cignetti's team joined 1894 Yale and 2019 North Dakota State as the only 16-0 champions in Division I football.

Seven months later Kalshi had the Hoosiers at 8.5 cents, and after a 52-16 opener against North Texas they trade at 9 bid, 10 asked, in a three-way tie for fifth by midpoint with Oregon and Miami. The panel went lower still at 6.0 percent. Both readings point at the same missing piece. Fernando Mendoza threw for 3,535 yards and 41 touchdowns, won the Heisman Trophy, and then went No. 1 overall to the Raiders in the April draft rather than returning. Curt Cignetti is still there. The quarterback who beat everybody is not.

History is the other weight. In the 12 playoff seasons the panel's card covers, seven different programs have won the title and exactly one has gone back-to-back: Georgia in 2021 and 2022. That is the base rate every seat reasoned from, and it is why the group would not follow the voters, who have Indiana sixth in the AP poll with a share of the first-place ballots.

The panel did not agree on how hard to fade, and the argument is worth reading in full:

"I hold Indiana at 6.0 against A's 4.5 because a 16-0 defending champion with 22 combined first-place votes has earned more than full repeat-discount."

— Kimi

Kimi's 6.0 was the number the panel eventually settled on. What the market has added since is depth: Indiana's 9-cent bid is 130,378 contracts deep, the deepest bid of any contract priced above a nickel. The crowd will not pay up for the champion, but it will defend the price it has.

Notre Dame Gave Back The Top Price Before It Played

Notre Dame is where the money and the machines were furthest apart in August, and it is the contract that moved most strangely this week. On August 22 it shared the top price with Ohio State at 12.5 cents, worth 10.6 percent of the board after rescaling; the panel said 7.1 percent, a 3.5-point gap that was then the widest on all 50 contracts. It closed Friday at 13. Then, at 9:43 a.m. on Sunday, with kickoff against Wisconsin still ten hours away, one seller put about 36,400 contracts through the book in 49 fills and walked the price from 12 to 10. It spent the afternoon at 10 and 11 and was 11 bid, 13 asked as the Irish led Wisconsin in the second half at Lambeau Field.

The crowd's case has not changed, and last season is most of it. Notre Dame went 10-2, lost only to Miami and Texas A&M, won its final ten games, and still missed the 12-team field, with the committee pointing to Miami's head-to-head win over the Irish. Notre Dame then withdrew from bowl consideration entirely. That is why the 10-2 in the table carries no postseason games. An independent schedule with no conference championship game is the cleanest road to a top seed anyone on this board has, and its quarterback, CJ Carr, opened the season as the Heisman favorite. Everyone else has to survive a title game first, and the same panel scored one of those in full on the MAC championship board.

The panel's counter-case is where it gets awkward. Three seats moved Notre Dame down during the revision round on a structural claim about seeding:

"The expanded playoff mathematically punishes independent paths. Notre Dame sits at #4/#5 in the preseason polls, but because they cannot win a conference, they are ineligible for a top-four seed and a first-round bye."

— Gemini Pro

[Editor's note: this premise is out of date. The 2026-27 College Football Playoff uses straight seeding, and the four highest-ranked teams receive first-round byes whether or not they won a conference. A top-four Notre Dame would get a bye. The verdict stands as published and will be graded as it was scored.]

The rest of the fade survives the correction. Winning four games against ranked opponents is harder than winning three, and Notre Dame still has to be a top-four team on December 6 to avoid it. But readers should discount the reasoning by exactly the amount that reasoning leaned on a rule that changed. What the Sunday seller was reacting to, nobody on this page can tell you. What we can tell you is that it happened before a snap was played.

Ohio State Is The One Place The Panel Pays Up

Every other headline disagreement on this board is the panel talking a price down. Ohio State is the exception, and a 56-3 win over Ball State did nothing to change it. The market has the Buckeyes at 12 bid, 13 asked, worth about 10.2 percent after rescaling, a shade above Notre Dame's 9.8 and above LSU's 8.9. The panel says 13.9 percent, and all eight seats landed between 13.0 and 15.9.

The card gave them plenty of reason. Ohio State is the consensus No. 1 in both preseason polls, with 40 of the AP first-place votes and 38 from the coaches, off a 12-2 season under Ryan Day, and it is one of four programs on the card with more than one title in the 12 playoff seasons it covers, alongside Alabama, Clemson and Georgia. What the panel would not do is turn that into an old-format favorite:

"I anchored on the two preseason polls' near-unanimous #1 and built out from there, but flattened the tail more than a 4-team-era board would justify: 12 teams now qualify, so a title requires surviving 3-4 straight games rather than just 1-2."

— Claude Sonnet

The market's behavior on Ohio State is worth one more line, because it runs opposite to LSU's. On Friday afternoon at 6:04 p.m., a single buyer took 100,000 Ohio State contracts at 13 cents in 11 fills, and the price did not move. One of the largest single orders on the board all week, absorbed at the ask, with 218,151 more contracts still offered at 13 tonight. Read that row against LSU's and the two boards on this page, the market's and the panel's, are visible in one comparison. The market will pay for Saturday. The panel will only pay for the roster.

Dark Horses The Panel Won't Dismiss

Below a nickel the board stops distinguishing between teams, and it is worth being precise about why. A row that shows no bid and a 1-cent ask is not a market that has decided a team is worth a penny. It is a market where nobody will post a bid, because the only exit from a 1-cent contract is settlement in January, and the sellers are queued so deep that a bid would be filled instantly and then stranded. Clemson, after Saturday, has about 1.17 million contracts offered at a penny and nobody on the other side. For a bid to appear on one of these rows, a team has to give the crowd a reason to expect a resale before January, which in practice means a ranked win or a conference lead by mid-October. That is the bar the panel's dark horses have to clear, and it is where the panel found the most to say.

BYU is the one to watch, because it is the anomaly inside the anomaly. The Cougars went 12-2, beat Utah Tech 63-7 on Saturday, and still have no buyer at all on the exchange: nothing bid, a penny asked. Yet about 33,600 BYU contracts traded in the 24 hours to Sunday night, more than any other no-bid contract on the board and more than Alabama, Ole Miss or USC, all of which carry real two-sided quotes. Somebody keeps paying the penny for a team the book will not bid on, and the panel is with the buyer, at 1.5 percent, the largest positive gap of any contract in the tail. BYU's road to a bid runs through Big 12 play; a conference lead in October is the kind of resale story that gets a penny contract a buyer on the other side. Utah went 11-2 and sits in the same no-bid bucket at a panel number of 1.0 percent, and Washington, which beat Washington State 24-10 on Sunday, has no bid either against a panel read of 1.1 percent.

Two names sit further up, and both went the wrong way for the panel this week. Texas A&M went 11-2, is eighth in the AP poll, and beat Missouri State 50-0, yet slipped from 3.5 cents to 2 bid, 3 asked against a panel read of 4.3 percent; Kimi raised the Aggies during the revision round on SEC bid volume. Ole Miss went 13-2 and the panel has it at 3.0 percent against a 2-cent bid.

Then there is the group nobody will price at all. Tulane went 11-3, James Madison went 12-2, and North Texas went 12-2 and then lost 52-16 at Indiana. All three sit at no bid and a 1-cent ask, and the panel agreed with the shape if not the certainty, putting each at 0.2 percent. In the 12-team era those teams can reach the field. Winning four straight games against the top of it is the part the market has decided is not worth a penny.

Where The Panel Changed Its Mind

After the first round every seat read the other seven boards anonymously and could revise. The biggest single move was DeepSeek's, which had Ohio State at 20.2 percent and cut it to 14.8 after seeing that no other seat would go near a fifth of the board.

Claude Opus made the most specific revision, and named where it came from:

"The revision I actually made came from Forecasters B and G, who read the coaching column harder than I did. This card is a churn outlier: Golding inherits a 13-2 Ole Miss while Kiffin takes a 7-6 LSU, Whittingham takes Michigan, Campbell takes Penn State, Franklin takes Virginia Tech. First-year staffs essentially never win titles, so I cut Ole Miss to 3.0, Michigan to 1.5 and Penn State to 0.9."

— Claude Opus

One seat read everything and moved nothing:

"After reading the other boards I held my numbers: Forecaster A's 20% on Ohio State reads like four-team-era pricing, and nothing in the card supports a king. I also did not adopt the Alabama-on-brand bump, because 11-4 and a 38-3 playoff loss is the evidence on the card."

— Claude Fable

The round did what it usually does, which is tighten the group. Before it, the eight seats spread across more than seven points on Ohio State, from 12.8 to 20.2. After it, the widest gap on the co-favorite was 2.9. That convergence is worth watching rather than trusting: a panel that agrees with itself is not the same thing as a panel that is right, and the one structural claim that spread fastest through the round was the seeding premise that turned out to be wrong. The one claim the whole panel shared without argument, that a first-year staff at LSU was a fade, is the one the market just priced against hardest.

What Would Change The Panel's Mind

Every seat was asked in August what single development would most reshape its board. Here is how those answers look after one weekend, in the order the calendar reaches them.

• Week 1 Is In The Books. The seats wanted evidence, and the market read the evidence one way: a 41-point LSU win was worth 5 cents, a 53-point Ohio State win was worth nothing, and a 7-point Oregon escape cost 3 cents on the bid. The panel's own test for LSU is not Clemson. It is September 19 at Ole Miss.
• A Quarterback Injury At Ohio State Or Oregon Before November. Five of the eight seats named this unprompted as the largest single risk to their board, and each said the probability would redistribute to Georgia, Texas and the other Big Ten contender rather than down the field.
• Ole Miss And LSU Through September. The August version of this page said the first-year-staff discount would show up first at Ole Miss at 2 cents if it was wrong. It showed up first at LSU at 10, and Ole Miss has moved half a cent. The panel discounted every first-year staff it discussed; September decides whether that was a rule or a reflex.
• Sunday, December 6, Selection Day. The committee's final ranking decides the 12-team field and the four byes. A top-four Notre Dame collects the bye three seats assumed it could not have, which would falsify the specific reasoning behind what was, until this week, the panel's largest fade.

When This Settles

Date	What happens
Sunday, December 6, 2026	Selection day: the 12-team field is set and the four highest-ranked teams get byes
December 18 And 19, 2026	First round
December 30, 2026 And January 1, 2027	Quarterfinals
January 14 And 15, 2027	Semifinals
Monday, January 25, 2027	National Championship Game, Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas

Kalshi's contracts on this event settle on the winner of that game and are listed to expire by February 23, 2027, with early close once a champion is declared. Prices on this page are as of September 6, 2026; panel numbers are as of August 22, 2026, and the board gets re-scored here when the story moves.

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The Bottom Line

Two weeks ago the market and the machines agreed on the shape of this season and argued about four names. They still agree on the shape: a field with no king, on a bracket that asks a champion to win three or four games against ranked teams, where nobody is worth more than 13 cents. What one Saturday changed is the argument. The crowd watched LSU score 51 against a Clemson team it prices at nothing and doubled a first-year staff to 10 cents on the busiest day any contract has had on this board in the two weeks we have tracked it. The panel, frozen on August 22, still has that staff at 2.5 percent and Ohio State's roster as the only thing on the board worth paying up for.

The 10 cents is real money and a real move. It is also a bid that was 28 contracts deep at one point Sunday night, with 150,000 contracts of sellers waiting two cents above it. The market doubled LSU and is not yet sure it meant it. One of these readings will look obvious on January 26. Neither is punditry, because both get graded here in public against the settlement.

Hero illustration: OddsShopper, in the house collage style.

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