Sorry, sorry, I know, this is incredibly late.
Our model’s CFP Bracketology heading into Week 8:
Moving In: Utah
For as well as Texas Tech has played and for as decisive as the game was between these guys, Movelor only has Utah half a point behind the Red Raiders after a dominant offensive showing against Arizona State. Will the Big 12 be a two-bid league? Probably! Our model has it 74% likely that multiple Big 12 teams make the playoff field. Is that absurd? No! The ACC was last year, and all of Tech, Utah, BYU, and Cincinnati have everything in front of them.
Moving Out: LSU
LSU won last weekend and covered Movelor’s spread, but someone had to move out to make room for the Utes, and Mississippi’s no-show against Washington State had some funky marginal effects on our model’s evaluation of LSU’s résumé. Basically, that loss looks meaningfully worse. Marginal but meaningful.
Moving Up: Texas Tech, Georgia
Finally, we’ve got a realistic-looking bracket. Tech’s up into a bye, meaning we no longer have three Big Ten teams on the top three lines. How realistic is it that the SEC champion doesn’t get a bye? Not that realistic. Our model gives it a 35% chance, with multiple SEC byes a 10% possibility. It does look realistic, though, as we wait to see who’ll end up on top of that SEC dogpile.
Georgia moved up into a home game, which, again, realistic-looking. We aren’t going to get chirped for moving Georgia up into a home game.
Moving Down: Oregon, Mississippi
Oregon’s not in terrible shape—their path to 11–1 is perfectly clear—but they’re down to a 26% chance of a bye, with Washington (A) and USC (H) now likelier “signature” wins than Penn State.
Mississippi’s out of a home game after the WSU showing. The catch there is that Movelor treats that similarly to Penn State’s loss to Northwestern when it comes to what it means for the rest of Mississippi’s season. There’s room for nuance, and it’s fair to expect Mississippi to turn it back on. At least they survived.
Probabilities, Average Final Rankings
How they stack up:
Of those ten teams with better than a 50% playoff probability, our model only expects 7.3 to make it. Six games into last year, Miami looked like a safe bet. So did Alabama. A lot of season happens in the last half of the season.
How far down do you have to go before it becomes likelier someone will miss it than that everyone will make it? Five spots. More likely than not (62%), all four of Ohio State, Indiana, Miami, and Texas Tech will make the playoff. More likely than not (52%), at least one of those four plus Oregon misses the field.
Similarly, the average outcome for Miami and Texas Tech is not a bye. That’s only the case for Ohio State and Indiana. Notre Dame’s average outcome is going to make a move after this weekend, but right now, it’s the 11-seed. Ditto Alabama. “Average” does skew downward, especially with Notre Dame, but with this much time left, median isn’t that different.
Movelor’s Top 25
From Ohio State on downward:
Oregon’s still at #2, and that’s not outrageous. Indiana might be better than them, but it was one data point. We’d never say Indiana should be seeded behind Oregon based on current résumés. We’d still take Oregon in a rematch.
That pack from 2nd to 7th is important. The gap between Georgia and Miami is the most natural cut line we’ve got when it comes to delineating Ohio State’s primary competition. There’s more of a gap between Georgia and Miami than there is again until you get way, way, way down the curve. Mississippi would bridge that gap if they’d played a respectable football game against WSU, but we also shouldn’t make absolutely nothing of that game. It happened. Mississippi played it.
Unless Ohio State really falls apart, most of the rest of the season will be a three-track race: On the first track will be Ohio State, mostly battling themselves. On the second track will be the pack, jostling for position, jostling to be #2. On the third track will be teams like Miami, Mississippi, and Texas A&M who probably feel like they belong on the second track but haven’t showed enough on the field yet. They’ll be trying to jump to the second track. That, in essence, is the national championship race.
Quick mention of Oklahoma:
Don’t doubt Movelor.
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We will try to update our bracketology earlier than Friday next week. We’ll also try to get something up about tomorrow’s games before tomorrow’s sun gets too high in the sky. Unfortunately, we can’t make any promises right now about just about anything. Sorry, guys.
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