Heading into Monday's title game, sportsbooks were reporting heavy money on Ohio State's moneyline, from both sharp and public players, which moved the price from +260 to +175 in the week leading up to the championship.

"The biggest concern in this game is the Ohio State moneyline action that keeps coming in no matter how low we go," Peter Childs of Sportsbook.ag told Covers before the game. "It's a huge move for a game of this magnitude but I hope that illustrates the extreme amount of exposure we currently have on the dog. It's a 4:1 ratio of money on the dog, and at plus juice it makes the liability even that much worse. Bottom line, for us to make money tonight we need Oregon to win outright, any other scenario and we lose."

Many other bookmakers admitted they were exposed, hoping for a best-case scenario of an Oregon win but with the Ducks failing to cover the 6-point spread and the game playing over the total. The 42-20 finish was a perfect storm for sportsbooks.

"It was a worst-case scenario," Jeff Stoneback, sportsbook manager at the MGM Mirage in Las Vegas, tells Covers. "Once you factor in the sides, and total, and moneyline, and the futures and props, (the National Championship) was a small loser for us. The only way we could get beat up was if Ohio State won and it went Under. And that's just what happened."

"It was just constant all the way through," Stoneback says of money coming in on OSU's moneyline. "We had pretty good two-way action on the side, but no one was interested in laying the -210 on the Ducks (to win outright)."

Other books in Las Vegas saw similar action on the Buckeyes to win outright. The Westgate Superbook also reported a big hit on the upset finish. "The game had enormous two-way write and a ton of Ohio State moneyline," Ed Salmons, head oddsmaker for the Westgate Superbook, tells Covers.

Online markets were singing the same tune. Michael Stewart of CarbonSports.ag said the only plus was breaking even on the spread action, which saw the line open Oregon -7.5 and drop as low as -5 before settling around -6.5 and -6 on gameday.

"Ohio State straight up was a hit and so was the total landing on the Under," Stewart tells Covers. "We broke even on the spread as we had slightly more money on the Ducks to cover the 6.5."

The total opened as high as 76 points before being trimmed to 74.5 points heading into Monday. In the hours before kickoff, action on the Under poured in and cut the number as low as 72 points. The MGM Mirage closed at 72.5.

The one silver lining to a rotten night for the bookmakers was the windfall from a season's worth of college football futures. Oregon was one of the more popular picks to win the national title and the Buckeyes fell out of a favor with futures bettors when star quarterback Braxton Miller went down. That gave books a nice win on what was otherwise a bad day for "The Bad Guys".

"Ohio State kind of bailed us out when it came to the futures," says Stoneback. "People weren't believes in the Buckeyes when Miller went down. Without those futures it would have been a decent loss for us."

This article is a reprint from Covers.com. To view the original story and comment, click here.