College Football Bracketology: Week 10, 2024

This bracketology is our college football model’s best current prediction of where the College Football Playoff field will ultimately land. It is not a reflection of where things currently stand. Here’s a link to an explanation of how it all works. Here’s another link to our model’s homepage, where you can access CFP probabilities, national championship probabilities, single-game spreads, and more.

(No graphic this week. Should return next week.)

Cotton Bowl Side

First Round: 9-seed Penn State at 8-seed Notre Dame
First Round: 12-seed Boise State at 5-seed Georgia

Rose Bowl: 1-seed Oregon vs. ND/PSU winner
Peach Bowl: 4-seed Clemson vs. UGA/Boise winner

Orange Bowl Side

First Round: 10-seed Tennessee at 7-seed Miami (FL)
First Round: 11-seed Alabama at 6-seed Ohio State

Sugar Bowl: 2-seed Texas vs. Miami/Tenn winner
Fiesta Bowl: 3-seed BYU vs. OSU/Bama winner

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The movement this week:

• On the heels of their blowout of Missouri, Alabama reenters the field, taking the 11-seed. Meanwhile, BYU takes over as the Big 12 favorite following their road win at UCF and Kansas State’s underwhelming victory over Kansas. The sum of all this is that K-State falls out, Alabama moves in, and BYU takes over a bye position.
• With Ohio State’s struggles against Nebraska, the Buckeyes dip behind Georgia, moving UGA into the 5-seed slot and Ohio State down to the 6-seed. With BYU passing Clemson in average final ranking, though, Georgia and Clemson remain on a joint Peach Bowl course.
• After the convincing win in Madison (and some help from those Ohio State struggles), Penn State jumps Tennessee for the 9-seed.

More details:

• Kansas State is the first team out, followed by Indiana, SMU, and Iowa State.
• Our model projects 9.3 of these teams to make the playoff, meaning it expects an average of three of these twelve to drop out.
• The SEC dips to 3.4 projected teams after rising to 3.7 last week. With more opportunities for strong wins, LSU was a better playoff hope than Texas A&M, so a lot of the drop comes from that game.
• The Big Ten rises from 2.7 to 3.0 projected teams, which also contributes to that SEC reduction. Penn State changed its outlook, now averaging an 11–1 finish in the regular season.
• Combined, the ACC and Big 12 held steady at 3.7 projected playoff teams. SMU and K-State survived. BYU and Pitt thrived.
• We’re down to eight Group of Five teams with better than a 1-in-100 playoff shot. Liberty drops off the list with the loss to Kennesaw State. In probability order, the nine now go Boise State, Army, Tulane, Navy, UNLV, Memphis, Western Kentucky, Louisiana. Aside from Liberty’s exit, the order of that list didn’t change at all, with the model expecting Notre Dame to thump Navy and Notre Dame meeting that expectation.

Looking ahead to Week 10:

• Ohio State’s trip to State College is the headliner, but I suspect Penn State will stick around the field with a loss, provided it isn’t a walloping. Our model currently has the Nittany Lions favored by at least 9.8 points in each of their four post-OSU games.
• Pitt’s trip to SMU has big ACC implications. Expectations for a Mustang win are baked pretty well into these simulations, but a big victory or some help from Miami (vs. Duke) and Clemson (vs. Louisville) could conceivably push SMU into the field.
• The nation’s falling for Texas A&M, but our model still has them averaging a 9–3 finish. A win over South Carolina in Columbia would push that to 10–2 and would probably make the Aggies likelier than not to reach the SEC Championship.
• BYU’s got a week off, which gives Iowa State a chance to tie them in the Big 12 standings and pass them in our model’s projections if the Cyclones can handily beat Texas Tech. Kansas State’s at Houston, also looking for a big win.
• There are a lot of good Group of Five games, including a fun one tonight in the Sun Belt (Louisiana’s at Texas State), but unless Boise State gets upended or looks vulnerable against San Diego State in Boise, we shouldn’t see much movement there.

We’ll have another update after next week’s games, of course, but following those, it’ll become semiweekly, as the CFP committee’s rankings will affect our projections in addition to the outcomes of the games themselves.

How the picture’s changed, week by week. Again, graphics should return (or in this case, arrive) next week: