Every year, sportsbooks put countless time, money and effort trying to predict who will have the greatest chance of winning a championship in any given season. It's no simple task: Each professional American sports league has at least 30 teams and college sports have over a hundred, all with the ultimate goal of being called champions by season's end.
The process yields future odds, the quantification of how confident a sportsbook feels any team is to win a championship. Most years the team with the greatest chance to win isn't the one that ultimately comes out on top -- but 2024 was not like most years.