Odds For DWTS Season 16 Finale, Zendaya And Kellie Pickler Neck And Neck

“Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do.” ~H Jackson Brown Jr.Orison Swett Mardenon on beating the odds

Our last Las Vegas Odds post for Dancing With The Stars Season 16! You ready? This time Sports Bovada has placed Zendaya and Kellie Pickler in ‘neck and neck’ odds for first and second place. Then in a little further down in third place is Aly Raisman and Jacoby Jones in 4th. Do you agree or disagree with this scenario? Do you think Zendaya is going to take it all or will Kellie or one of the others? Who is the dark horse? I tend to think JACOBY is the dark horse. Watch out for him to be explosive Monday night. I think Kellie will take it all with Jacoby placing second or even first? We will soon see, but, that’s where I’d put my bets and who I’m rooting for. I’m really liking Aly now too especially after her and Mark’s Afro Jazz dance.

So, below are the new odds:

Zendaya Coleman 2/3
Kellie Pickler 6/5
Aly Raisman 14/1
Jacoby Jones 20/1

Here are last week’s Las Vegas Odds to compare.

Zendaya Coleman 2/3
Kellie Pickler 13/10
Aly Raisman 12/1
Jacoby Jones 18/1
Ingo Rademacher 150/1

Let’s see what Heidi and Courtney think and be sure you let us know your thoughts and predictions too in comments….

Courtney: To be quite honest, I’m just kind of ready for this season to be over – and I find myself giving fewer and fewer hoots about who wins each week.  😛 I’m fully expecting Zendaya to get set up to win this thing, and I’m vacillating between them making it a neck-and-neck race with either Kellie or Aly…it SHOULD be Kellie, but they seem to have this love affair with Aly as of late, even though I still find her to be a total snooze to watch.  I do think the freestyle round could be a make-or-break dance – even though I said the same thing last season, and the strongest freestyle didn’t win.  I think Kellie & Jacoby could be the standouts in that round, although if Zendaya goes the hip-hop route and Aly goes the gymnastic route (and I think both are pretty likely), I’m guessing the judges are going to gush, regardless of how impressive the dances actually are.  I’m worried that Jacoby is going to get lowballed, regardless of how well he actually dances, and that he may not be able to hope for anything better than 4th 🙁 I’d say he’d have the MBT in the bag in a regular season, but with the judges getting increasingly wonky each season, I don’t think that holds true anymore.  All this manipulation makes me think it’s time to move on and blog something else…

Heidi: Word, Court.  Do the odds makers have it right? Probably. Is that how it SHOULD be? No, but you don’t have to be a genius (or, actually, maybe you do 😀 ) to see the set up here. They LOVE them some Zendaya and Aly, yet Kellie isn’t emotionally connecting to Derek. Uh huh. Well, I guess it probably is easier to emotionally connect when you get to add a bit of hip hop to every dance and you don’t even have to wear ballroom shoes…or do the rumba.  In any case – the truth (and the chances of the odds being right) will be in the scoring and the words they use to critique the dancers – not the actual dances themselves.  What little weasel words will they use to tear anyone not named Zendaya down to try to manipulate the audience?? I think the key will be in how they score Jacoby, actually. They will either low ball him to keep him away from the trophy (which means that one or all of the ladies is getting enough votes to beat him if his score is low enough) OR they will score him about right and let the chips fall (which means he’s getting a ton of votes and it doesn’t matter how they score him). There are two things at play here – the judges ego/show credibility and TPTB vested interests.  We MAY get to see which one is stronger.  What I mean when I say “judges ego” – do you really think that any of those three want to come out on the wrong side of history??  They (and TPTB to a much lesser extent) want to be able to point and say “Look, the people pick the winner and we the judges were also right on target” – it’s ego.  That’s why I say that if Jacoby is going to win *regardless* cuz he’s getting a ton of votes – they will score him appropriately, or maybe even a bit of an over score. However, if it is possible for someone else to win (Zendaya is really all they care about with Aly and Kellie a distant 2nd and 3rd, respectively), they will low ball Jacoby with the intent of one of the other three getting the trophy.  Then the scoring of the other three comes into play.  I suspect, thanks to her own fanbase and lots and lots of help from the producers all season, that Zendaya is getting a ton of votes.  I think it’s an all or nothing thing with Jacoby, frankly – which leads me to think that the odds makers have it about right. Of course, the judges did put Jacoby in first place last week, AHEAD of two better dancers, so…foreshadowing??