Underdog Fantasy has decided to roll out College Football Best Ball for the 2024 season. This addition brings in a new crop of Best Ball players, but many strategies from NFL Best Ball remain the same with the Underdog Best Bowl Mania college football contest.
If you’ve played in any of the major NFL Best Ball contests and consumed any content, then you’ve heard about the importance of Week 17. Even with the added focus, Underdog contest payouts are incredibly top-heavy, placing added importance on the final week of the tournament.
This is no different for the new college football tournament. Weeks 12 through 14 ultimately affect your portfolio ROI more than other weeks.
The payout structure for Underdog’s Best Bowl Mania is as follows:
| PLACE | PRIZE |
| 1st | $20,000 |
| 2nd | $10,000 |
| 3rd | $5,000 |
| 4th | $4,000 |
| 5th | $3,430 |
| 6th | $2,000 |
| 7th | $1,750 |
| 8th | $1,500 |
| 9th | $1,250 |
| 10th | $1,000 |
| 11-20th | $700 |
| 21-50th | $500 |
| 51-94th | $200 |
| 95-376th | $15 |
| 377-1880th | $10 |
WIth the jump from $15 to $200 by simply making it to Week 14, there’s a case to be made that the Week 13 semifinal is the most important week of the contest. With just a 50% return on your original $10 investment by making the semifinals, the ultimate goal to be profitable is to make the finals with a live roster.
One killer in that goal is playoff byes.
Quarterfinal Byes
The top two teams from Weeks 1-11 will move onto the Quarterfinals and a 10-team pod.
A whopping 18 teams available in the contest have byes in Week 12.
Note that the contest includes players from only the Power 4 conferences, plus the remaining Pac-12 teams (Oregon State and Washington State).
Indiana
Iowa
Michigan
Minnesota
Oklahoma State
Texas Tech
UCF
TCU
Duke
Florida State
Georgia Tech
North Carolina State
Miami (FL)
Virginia Tech
Oklahoma
Vanderbilt
Ole Miss
Mississippi State
Most notable from this list of bye weeks is Oklahoma State and the presumed top overall pick, Ollie Gordon. From the Fantasy Points Best Ball Rankings, eight players ranked as first or second-round picks have a bye in Week 12.
There’s no world where you’d fade some of the top players just because of their Week 12 bye, but it’s worth avoiding some of these teams as part of multi-player stacks. With only 20 rounds to build a superflex roster, stacks built around Jaxson Dart, Cam Ward, Jackson Arnold, or Haynes King will need contingency plans to account for their 0s in the quarterfinals.
Semifinal Byes
Two teams in each 10-team pod advance to the Week 13 semifinal, and with the pay jump from $15 to $200 coming by advancing to the eight-team pod, making the finals weighs heavily on your final portfolio results in the contest. Only two teams in the contest have a bye in Week 13:
Oregon
Washington
While the number of teams on bye is lower, the potential impact of these bye weeks is monumental. Oregon has three players ranked inside the top 12 and another inside the top 24. Drafters at the 1.12 spot may feel the impact of this most if they fall into a stack of Tez Johnson and Dillon Gabriel to start their drafts.
With the depth of college fantasy, it’s more plausible to survive the loss of your first and second-round selections than in an NFL Best Ball contest. However, I’d still expect most of these teams to struggle to make the finals.
