College Football Bracketology: Week 4, 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, through which you can access CFP probabilities, national championship probabilities, single-game spreads, and more.

Cotton Bowl Side

First Round: 9-seed Tennessee at 8-seed Mississippi
First Round: 12-seed Memphis at 5-seed Alabama

Sugar Bowl: 1-seed Texas vs. Miss/Tenn winner
Fiesta Bowl: 4-seed Clemson vs. Alabama/Memphis winner

Orange Bowl Side

First Round: 10-seed Notre Dame at 7-seed Oregon
First Round: 11-seed Penn State at 6-seed Georgia

Rose Bowl: 2-seed Ohio State vs. Oregon/ND winner
Peach Bowl: 3-seed Kansas State vs. UGA/PSU winner

**

Two big moves this week:

• First, Michigan moves out and Notre Dame moves back in. Movelor hasn’t found bottom yet on the Wolverines, who continued their precipitous drop. They still finish 9–3 in the model’s average simulation, but they’re getting closer and closer to 8–4. Notre Dame, meanwhile, reasserted themselves, making that schedule look manageable once more. They’re back over 50% likely to end up in the field, even with an average record of 10–2.
• Second, Memphis moves in ahead of Liberty, and by a wide margin. For the first few weeks of the season, our model’s Group of Five favorite was always around 15% likely to make the playoff field. Memphis is 35% likely after beating Florida State. That’s still not all that likely, but it’s enough to make Memphis the clear leader. They finish the season ranked 24^th in our average simulation.

Smaller movements:

• Kansas State jumps back ahead of Clemson after Friday night’s beatdown of Arizona.
• Alabama climbs ahead of Georgia on the heels of yesterday’s performances.
• Oregon surges coming off their first clean performance of the year.
• Mississippi and Tennessee both inch forward after convincing victories, pushing Penn State into the “last team in” slot.

More details, with a lot of numbers:

• Michigan is this week’s first team out, followed by Missouri, Miami, and Washington State.
• Our model expects 7.57 of these 12 teams to make the eventual playoff. Which means: Expect a ton of movement from here on out. It’s most confident (94%) in Texas getting in, followed by Alabama, Ohio State, and Georgia, as you might expect. But even among those four, it’s likelier that one misses the field than that all four make it.
• The SEC projects to send 4.34 teams to the playoff, meaning that although the league is the most highly represented in this week’s projection, with five teams, it’s not all that likely it’ll lose more than one of those. It’s looking like a four-bid league, with five bids likelier than three.
• The Big Ten projects to send 2.64 teams to the playoff, but with Washington losing to Washington State, its options are more limited. Six separate SEC teams have better than a 1-in-4 playoff shot right now. Only four Big Ten teams are past that threshold.
• Neither the Big 12 (1.49 teams) nor the ACC (1.32 teams) projects to land multiple teams in the playoff, but together, they’re likelier to send three teams than two.
• Notre Dame and Washington State’s playoff hopes aren’t mutually exclusive, nor are they necessarily all that correlated, but combining those two with the Group of Five, we get 2.22 playoff bids going to teams outside the power conferences. The most likely playoff breakdown, then, is seven teams from the SEC and Big Ten, three teams from the Big 12 and ACC, and two more teams, with Notre Dame and Washington State likeliest to fill the non-Group of Five spot.

Looking ahead to this coming week:

• The USC/Michigan game will of course be pivotal, with leverage close to that of an elimination game.
• Tennessee could make some big gains with a win in Norman, but the Vols are favored there and probably wouldn’t flip their average regular season scenario up to 11–1. It’s closer to do-or-die for the Sooners.
• Utah’s trip to Stillwater will clarify the Big 12 picture, but possibly only momentarily given how tightly packed that league is. Elsewhere, Kansas State’s at BYU in a dangerous late-night setup.
• There’ll be plenty of interesting ACC action, ranging from Louisville hosting Georgia Tech to Clemson hosting NC State to Miami going to USF for a non-conference game. With Florida State’s demise, Miami’s season is devolving into a series of games as a moderate favorite. Depending what others on their schedule do, the Hurricanes could go the entire regular season without playing a ranked team.
• Memphis has to go try to avoid a letdown game at Navy. Washington State has to try to avoid a letdown game at home on Friday night against San Jose State. Keep an eye on Toledo (at WKU), James Madison (at UNC), and Liberty (vs. East Carolina), as well as the Tulane/Louisiana matchup.

Plenty more to come. Here’s how the bracketology has changed as the season’s gone along: