College Football Bracketology: Week 8, 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.

Cotton Bowl Side

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

Sugar Bowl: 1-seed Texas vs. Georgia/PSU winner
Fiesta Bowl: 4-seed Iowa State vs. OSU/Boise winner

Orange Bowl Side

First Round: 10-seed Miami (FL) at 7-seed Alabama
First Round: 11-seed BYU at 6-seed Notre Dame

Rose Bowl: 2-seed Oregon vs. Bama/Miami winner
Peach Bowl: 3-seed Clemson vs. ND/BYU winner

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The movement this week:

• With Ohio State falling to Oregon, Texas reclaims its spot as the projected top overall seed, which means Texas’s average season results in the best CFP ranking in our model’s simulations.
• Having beaten Ohio State, Oregon becomes the new Big Ten favorite and jumps to the 2-seed, lining the Ducks up for a Rose Bowl playoff opener.
• With Iowa State’s win in Morgantown, the Cyclones become the Big 12 favorite, jumping Kansas State for the honor.
• Between their own underwhelming showings and Texas’s dominance, Alabama and Georgia drop to the 7-seed and 8-seed. Ohio State slides down into the 5-seed, and Notre Dame moves up to the 6-seed.
• Mississippi drops out after its loss at LSU. Undefeated BYU replaces the Kickin’ Kiffins.

More details:

• Tennessee remains our first team out, followed by Kansas State, Mississippi, and SMU.
• Our model projects 8.7 of these teams to make the final real playoff field. That means it expects three of these twelve to drop out.
• The SEC now projects to send only 3.5 teams to the playoff, down from 4.0 last week and 4.3 the week prior. That still could mean one SEC team moving in from the bubble—it’s slightly likelier than not—but the league’s second and third tiers have had a bad two weeks.
• The Big Ten now projects to contribute 2.8 playoff teams, up from 2.6 last week. Oregon and Penn State both made moves towards safety, and Ohio State still remains a safe bet to make the field.
• The ACC and Big 12 are up to a combined 3.6 projected playoff teams. What this basically means is that you should currently expect three or four SEC playoff teams, three Big Ten playoff teams, three or four ACC and Big 12 playoff teams, and then two from the Group of Five, Notre Dame, and Washington State.
• Eight Group of Five teams have better than a 1-in-100 playoff shot. Those same eight all enjoy better than a 1-in-30 playoff shot. Big gap after Navy. The eight: Boise State, James Madison, Tulane, Army, Liberty, UNLV, Memphis, and Navy.
• Going back to the Big 12 for a moment: While no individual Big 12 team projects to finish the season with fewer than two losses, there are enough teams with viable paths that it’s likely at least one does. We’ve seen some chatter about the Big 12 knocking itself out of the playoff, and that isn’t very likely to happen, especially with no undefeated mid-majors left besides Army, Navy, and Liberty.

Looking ahead to Week 8:

• Georgia gets a chance to move back towards the front of the SEC race, visiting Texas.
• Tennessee gets a chance to move back into the projected field, hosting Alabama. A loss could knock Alabama out of our projection, at least temporarily. It would depend on the margin, and on what happens elsewhere.
• Notre Dame’s in Atlanta playing Georgia Tech, a game with a small but real chance of opening up a spot for conferenced teams.
• Miami’s at Louisville, trying to put the Cardinals away and entrench itself further as an at-large playoff team in the event the Hurricanes don’t win the ACC.

Here’s how the picture’s changed week over week. We know the table’s getting more cramped. We forgot to make this into a graphic this week, but we’ve added a note to make that happen next week.