For example South Carolina pre tourney was from what I'm seeing an avg. of about 200-1
Well what if you bet $1 and parlayed it all the way to the Championship?
The ML odds on S Carolina tourney games so far and the projected ML for the next 2 games (shopping the major books for the best line):
vs. Marquette +100
vs. Duke +300
vs. Baylor +145
vs. Florida +135
vs. Gonzaga +260
vs. UNC +250/vs. Oregon +135
So if they beat UNC in the final $1 * 2.00 * 4.00 * 2.45 * 2.35 * 3.60 * 3.50 = $580
If they beat Oregon $1 * 2.00 * 4.00 * 2.45 * 2.35 * 3.60 * 2.35 = $390
As you can see, the difference is significant, plus hedging would be much simpler because you could just pocket some money towards the end juice free.
Instead of winning $200 from $1 with a futures bet you could have won $579 (190% more) if they beat UNC or $389 (95% more) if they beat Oregon. I would say the odds encountered on the way to the finals were about average this year, and if anything below average as they could have faced some tougher opponents and been bigger underdogs on the way to the finals.
If you wanted to bet a more sizeable amount like $100 is you shouldn't have any problem getting down the kind of money you would need to as the tourney progressed.
Basically we are giving up a ton of extra juice betting futures because we don't think we could bring ourselves to put that kind of money in play parlaying every game. I will never bet a future instead of parlaying again for sudden death tourneys like the NCAA tourney, BCS championship, or any pro sport playoff where you can bet a series.
However, this only works with long shots or semi long shots. Betting #1 seeds for example you couldn't overcome the heavily juiced lines for the first and maybe second round games. In these cases parlaying every game would actually pay less than a futures bet
