With college football season on the horizon, ESPN Chalk's college football experts -- Phil Steele, "Stanford Steve" Coughlin and Chris Fallica -- combine to give you betting previews of the top 25 teams, according to the ESPN College Football Rankings. They break down each team's strengths and weaknesses, along with season-win-total bets and national title odds.
Odds from Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook as of Aug. 22.
Ohio State Buckeyes
National title odds: 3-1 (opened 8-1)
Season win total: 11
FPI win total projection: 11.9
Phil Steele
Strengths: With Kevin Wilson taking over as offensive coordinator, I expect J.T. Barrett to revert to his 2014 form: a Heisman Trophy front-runner before his season-ending injury. The Buckeyes are very strong at the line of scrimmage with my No. 2-rated offensive line and No. 3-rated defensive line. The back seven on defense is loaded with potential All-Americans.
Weaknesses: They have talent at wide receiver, but
Over/under (11): The Buckeyes will be favored in every game with the toughest road game at Michigan at the end of the season. They will be at least a touchdown favorite in 11 games, so I will go with the over.
National title odds (3-1): Meyer has lost three bowl games in his career. After his first two bowl losses, he won the national title the very next season. Can he make it 3 for 3? Ohio State was No. 128 on my experience chart in 2016, and this season the Buckeyes move all the way to No. 38, going from six returning starters to 15. I like the odds here and would play the Buckeyes.
"Stanford Steve" Coughlin
O/U (11): The best addition to a team in all of college football was the hire of Kevin Wilson to be the offensive coordinator for the Buckeyes. The last time we saw the OSU offense, they were blanked in embarrassing fashion in the national semifinal against Clemson ... it was pretty bad.
Obviously, the negative talk around Barrett is warranted after the way he played late in the season, but there too many positives for Barrett, and I think that he will have a comeback campaign and lead his team to the national title. The Buckeyes are the most talented team in their conference and maybe in the country. Give me the over on their win total.
Chris Fallica
Over/under (11): 12, 12, 11, 11, 11 -- those are the regular-season win totals in Meyer's five years in Columbus. Surely Ohio State will not win fewer than 10 games, will it? FPI is bullish on the Buckeyes, as they have by far the best chance to win out (35 percent), possess the 52nd-rated schedule and project to win 11.9 games. The only game Ohio State projects to have worse than an 82 percent chance to win is the Oklahoma game in Columbus on Sept. 9.
But think back to how poorly Ohio State finished the 2016 season. The Buckeyes were shut out and managed just 215 yards against Clemson. They had 310 and 330 yards against Michigan and Michigan State, respectively, in the final two regular-season games, with the offense managing five TDs and six 3-and-outs in those two games. Barrett has seen his QBR drop from 87.1 in 2014 to 76.9 in 2015 and just 68.0 last year. From Oct. 22 on, it was even worse -- 66.2, which ranked 53rd in the FBS and 34th among Power 5 QBs. Gone are playmakers Curtis Samuel and WR Noah Brown.
Ohio State has recruited well, but the offense remains a question mark. If Wilson can solve the woes, OSU should easily win 11 games. But if not, maybe games against Oklahoma, Penn State, Iowa and Michigan become tougher than anticipated. Still, push comes to shove, it hard to see anything worse than 11, but it is hard to put money down anticipating a 12-0 season.
Title odds (3-1): While it's highly likely OSU will win the Big Ten and be in the CFP, those odds are too short for a play, in my opinion. If OSU gets to the title game, there's a good chance it would be an underdog against Alabama and you could get plus money on a one-game scenario in the title game and take all the risk of simply getting into the game out of the equation.