A quick look at our projections for the rest of the season. These blend our usual power rankings and season simulation with a model of the playoff committee’s selection process (while recognizing lots of uncertainty about that process – see last week’s post for more detail).
Tight week so little commentary here. It’s all Bama all the time, anyway – maybe that’s why the undercard is especially intriguing this year.
In this summary table the “Conference” column gives the probability a team wins its conference, based purely on M-P numbers. “Playoff” is the probability of making the playoff, which is speculation about the process conditional on play through the conference championships. Then “Title” is the championship probability, based purely on M-P numbers, conditional on making the playoff.
Team | Conference | Playoff | Title |
Alabama | 92% | 99% | 61% |
Clemson | 78% | 76% | 12% |
Ohio State | 11% | 59% | 14% |
Washington | 43% | 40% | 4% |
Oklahoma | 82% | 34% | 2% |
Wisconsin | 38% | 32% | 2% |
Michigan | 27% | 27% | 5% |
Colorado | 24% | 11% | 0% |
Penn State | 22% | 8% | 0% |
Oklahoma State | 18% | 8% | 0% |
Washington State | 17% | 2% | 0% |
Florida | 8% | 2% | 0% |
USC | 16% | 2% | 0% |
Virginia Tech | 21% | 0% | 0% |
Nebraska | 1% | 0% | 0% |
Western Michigan | 67% | 0% | 0% |
North Carolina | 1% | 0% | 0% |
Here are the 4-team playoff brackets we’re seeing most often (w/o consideration of seed):
- Alabama,Clemson,Ohio State,Washington (15%)
- Alabama,Clemson,Ohio State,Wisconsin (13%)
- Alabama,Clemson,Michigan,Washington (8%)
- Alabama,Clemson,Michigan,Oklahoma (7.5%)
- Alabama,Clemson,Ohio State,Oklahoma (7%)
- Alabama,Clemson,Washington,Wisconsin (6%)
- Alabama,Clemson,Ohio State,Penn State (4%)
- Alabama,Clemson,Oklahoma,Wisconsin (3%)
- Alabama,Clemson,Colorado,Ohio State (3%)
- Alabama,Ohio State,Washington,Wisconsin (2.5%)
There are some entertainingly blueblood possibilities, if highly unlikely ones:
- Alabama,Ohio State,Oklahoma,Penn State (1.7%, 16th most likely)
- Alabama,Michigan,Oklahoma,USC (0.6%, 25th most likely)
Prefer downmarket?
- Clemson,Florida,Oklahoma State,Wisconsin (0.01%, 117th most likely)