Posting the favorites for the following season’s champion as soon as the current season ends is a near-impossible task. So much changes during an offseason. That is especially true in college sports and even more so in recent years with the explosion of the transfer portal.
With the transfer portal not opening until April 7, which is later than last year, most teams are still roughly just ideas and can drastically change in the next month. Throw in the coaching carousel and declarations for the NBA Draft and many rosters will undergo significant change between now and the start of next season.
That said, the sportsbooks still posted odds for next year’s men’s college basketball national champion and the favorites are the same teams that were at the top of this year’s bracket. Duke leads the way as the favorite on both FanDuel and DraftKings, followed by newly crowned champion Michigan and the other No. 1 seeds, Arizona and Florida.
At the same time that Duke coach Jon Scheyer is seeing a pattern of his team’s blowing leads in the NCAA Tournament, his teams continue to enter every season with high expectations. Scheyer’s team is expected to lose national player of the year Cameron Boozer and potentially sophomore guard Isaiah Evans to the NBA, but could return the bulk of the roster while adding two McDonald’s All-Americans in 6-foot-11 Cameron Williams and guard Deron Rippey Jr. Williams is regarded as a top-five recruit in the 2026 class.
Is that enough to be the favorite to win next year’s national title? Well, this goes back to the point of these teams still largely being ideas.
Duke is +700 (7-to-1) on FanDuel and +800 (8-to-1) on DraftKings. Michigan is next (+800 on FanDuel and +1200 on DraftKings). Leading scorer Yaxel Lendeborg is a senior, but Michigan’s next five leading scorers have eligibility remaining and coach Dusty May also has two high school All-Americans coming in.
It’s equal parts unsurprising and unimaginative that the top four teams in the odds to win next year’s title are also the four teams that were No. 1 seeds in the 2026 NCAA Tournament. Arizona and Florida are in the top four behind Duke and Michigan. The next five teams are the same at both sportsbooks, albeit in a different order: Houston, Michigan State, UConn, Kansas and Arkansas. Michigan State, Kansas and Arkansas have top-five recruiting classes coming in.
How much confidence is being shown in Mike Malone as North Carolina’s coach? A pretty good amount, actually. UNC is 22-to-1 on FanDuel and 25-to-1 on DraftKings, which puts the Tar Heels in the top 15 on the odds board.
For now, it appears the board is a mix of this year’s success and the incoming recruiting classes. It will be interesting to see how things move after the transfer portal plays out.