Welcome to our daily college football newsletter. If you like what you read and want it delivered to your email inbox every morning, subscribe to our Substack.
**
In its four-team era, we used to talk about the playoff as a collection of lanes. We’d start with fifteen or so—three in the SEC, two in the other Power Five’s, two more for Notre Dame and the Group of Five—and gradually, many would close while a few would combine. At the beginning of the year, sure, we could theoretically see a path to two Pac-12 playoff teams, but by Week 5, those two lanes had usually consolidated to one. Towards the end of the year, lanes would merge across conferences, the Big 12’s championship hopefuls also wrestling a one-loss team from the Big Ten. The point is: The four-team playoff race was more orderly than that of its twelve-team successor.
This morning, we went through our model’s latest simulations and checked the correlations between different teams’ playoff chances. What does this mean? We were looking for lanes. If Team A misses the playoff, how much likelier is Team B to make it? Where are those correlations the largest? Where is it flipped, meaning where does one team benefit from another playing well enough to make the field?
We did this pretty quickly, so we didn’t adjust for how playoff-likely different teams are. The correlation coefficient between Texas making/missing the playoff and Ohio State making/missing the playoff is virtually zero, but that comes in part from each being more than 95% likely to make it. We also only looked at the 22 likeliest playoff candidates, meaning those who enjoy better than a 1-in-10 playoff probability this morning. Apologies to Indiana and Washington State, but if there’s a correlation between you two, we missed it.
What we learned:
Tennessee Is the SEC’s Bogeyman. Or What Passes for One.
A lot of this comes from where Tennessee sits relative to the 50/50 line (they’re 47.3% playoff-likely heading into tonight), but two of the three strongest correlations in playoff probability involve the Volunteers. If Tennessee makes the playoff, Alabama and Georgia are 69% and 73% likely to make it, respectively. If Tennessee misses the playoff, Alabama and Georgia rise to an 88% and a 90% chance. For Tennessee itself, the consequences involving those two are more dire: If Alabama makes the playoff, Tennessee’s only 41% likely to make it, whereas if Bama misses, the Vols leap to 71%. If Georgia reaches the twelve-team bracket, Tennessee’s only 42% playoff-likely. If Georgia doesn’t, Tennessee goes up to 72%.
Part of what this demonstrates is the weakness of any current “lanes.” 73% and 90% are meaningfully different, but 73%, or roughly 3-in-4, is still a great probability. Even for Tennessee, who’s less likely to make the field if Alabama and Georgia do, 41% and 42% are far from out of it. Even when Alabama and Georgia both reach the playoff (something that happens about two thirds of the time), Tennessee’s still got a 36% playoff chance. That’s a good bit better than Shohei Ohtani’s batting average.
Still, to the extent any SEC lanes exist, they run through Knoxville. Tennessee’s games against Alabama (next week at Tennessee) and Georgia (next month in Athens) are the two highest-leverage games on the national schedule based on what we know right now. The chance all three teams make the field is only 24%. The chance all three plus Texas make it is 22%. The chance all four of those plus Mississippi make it is only 11%. It isn’t that Tennessee needs to sit there hoping Alabama or Georgia misses out on an at-large bid. It’s that Tennessee probably needs to knock at least one of them out of this thing.
The Group of Five Has One Lane.
It’s not impossible for the Group of Five to send two teams to the playoff. There’s no rule against it, and as Boise State fever rampages across the blogosphere, plenty of would-be bracketologists are even putting the Broncos in position to receive a bye, a reward reserved for the four highest-ranked conference champions. This too is possible—the Big 12 could eat itself alive—but it’s not likely. There’s an 18% chance Boise State gets a bye. The Broncos will probably lose at least once more in the regular season, and they’re unlikely to finish with a win better than the one they already have over Washington State. Narrative matters, and Boise State could get a kinder eye from the committee if the media is strongly at the Broncos’ back, but based on precedent, Boise State should expect one of the widest AP/CFP gaps when CFP rankings are first released in November.
Still, if Tulane—the second-likeliest playoff mid-major—reaches the field, Boise State’s own chance drops to 13%. That playoff race, the one between Tulane and Boise State, is the most strongly correlated in the country. If Tulane misses the playoff, Boise’s up to a 47% shot, a number similar to Tennessee’s today, nearly a coin toss. If Boise State misses, Tulane climbs to 25%. If Boise State makes it, Tulane drops to 5%, which in most instances turns into zero.
This can change, but with it already impossible for any Group of Five team to win twelve conference games (all three remaining mid-major undefeateds have eleven games on their pre-conference championship schedule), this probably won’t be the year we get two mid-majors in the field. Someone will win the Big 12, and they’ll beat a solid number of good teams to do it.
Speaking of the Big 12…
Rematches Are Tough.
Kansas State finishes the regular season playing Iowa State in Ames. There’s a chance the pair then plays again the following week in Arlington. Narrowly, the Cyclones edge BYU as the Big 12’s second-likeliest playoff team.
Consequently, the K-State/Iowa State rivalry—Farmaggedon, as it is sometimes known—has the fourth-strongest playoff correlation of any in our sample. It too is negative. At least one of these two makes the playoff 71% of the time. They both make it in only 12% of simulations.
Rematches aren’t everything—the fifth-strongest correlation belongs to Clemson and SMU, who don’t play in the regular season—but if they happen, they guarantee at least two total losses between the pair. In the Big 12 and ACC, that’s a lot of losses.
Once Teams Play, They’re Friends.
Any positive correlations in our sample are much, much smaller than the negative ones. Georgia/Clemson, our strongest positive correlation, is six times smaller than Boise State/Tulane’s negative correlation. But, they’re there. If Clemson makes the playoff, Georgia is likelier to make it, and vice versa. The change is small—Clemson only climbs from 64% to 69% likely if Georgia is also in the field—so rooting for your own team’s strength of schedule is probably wasted energy. But the phenomenon is, to an extent, real.
It also sometimes applies within the same conference.
While the next two largest positive correlations—Kansas State/Tulane and Oregon/Boise State—also belong to nonconference foes (there’s a very narrow chance the Group of Five race boils down to Kansas State, Oklahoma, and Oregon, the three teams to beat Tulane and Boise so far), the fourth is Alabama/Georgia. This isn’t a universal rule—Kansas State and BYU are still negatively correlated, albeit very, very narrowly—but in general, negative correlations between teams on one another’s schedule (i.e., Tennessee and Alabama) come only from the aspect where one can potentially knock the other out. Had we done this exercise before Georgia and Alabama played, there probably would have been a negative correlation there too.
**
Enjoying what you’re reading? Subscribe to our Substack to receive it every day in your email inbox.
**
Liberty vs. FIU turned out pretty fun last night, with a goal line fumble, a fourth down stop, and some questionable decision-making by Mike MacIntyre which likely cost FIU a major win. (With 1:42 on the clock, FIU was given the opportunity to go for two from Liberty’s one-yard line. Convert, and the score would have been 25–24. Instead, MacIntyre declined the relevant offsides penalty and FIU went on to lose in overtime.)
The upshot of the game from a playoff perspective is that despite winning, Liberty’s playoff probability dropped. The value of avoiding a loss was more than offset by the win not being very impressive (margin matters) and by the aspect where Liberty is now viewed as 2.2 points weaker by Movelor heading into next week, something which makes them marginally likelier to lose one of their remaining contests. It’s hard to make your playoff probability drop with a victory, but the dregs of Conference USA are bad enough to make it doable.
Tonight, there’s even more playoff baseball (and opening week hockey) on the docket, but for what it is, Conference USA offers us New Mexico State vs. Jacksonville State. The game’s in Jacksonville.
Jacksonville State, as always, is the one in Alabama. (Jacksonville University is a private school in Florida and got rid of its non-scholarship FCS football team at the end of 2019.) Rich Rodriguez is still coaching the Gamecocks, and after a great first FBS season for that program last year…the sequel has gone poorly. They’re a big favorite tonight, and they’re 1–0 in Conference USA, but a 2–3 overall start has them down to a 7–5 projected regular season finish, a step back from last year’s eventual 9–4.
New Mexico State misses Diego Pavia and Jerry Kill and most of the rest of last year’s magical team. The Aggies had the most offseason roster turnover of anyone in the country, and they’re already 1–4 overall, with an 0–2 mark in conference play (though they did play Liberty close back in Week 2). They probably aren’t the worst team in Conference USA, but they’d be in a hypothetical argument over the second-worst, and they don’t get to play truly terrible Kennesaw State this year, increasing the dawning fear of winlessness.
Jacksonville State quarterback Tyler Huff will be familiar to our FCS readers, a sixth-year senior who spent two years at Furman after three at Presbyterian. He’s got a bad TD/INT ratio, but that’s more about the lack of touchdowns than some huge interception ratio. Rodriguez has him running a bit more than Furman did, but that might be misleading as he was banged up down the stretch last fall. It is rare that Huff can make the big play when necessary, but he did do this one time.
NMSU kicker Abraham Montano has a 51-yarder to his name this year, and you might hear about that some if the game’s close. One thing to remember there is that NMSU home games are played at some altitude. Las Cruces is roughly four thousand feet above sea level. Jacksonville, Alabama is only seven hundred feet up.
**
Yesterday, over on the site, we posted this week’s futures bets and a look at Notre Dame’s NIL situation in the wake of the big basketball recruiting haul and Deuce Knight’s flip to Auburn.
Tomorrow, we’ll have our Week 7 preview up right here, talking Ohio State/Oregon, the Red River Shootout, two big night games in the Big 12, and Mississippi/LSU. Great two weeks ahead. If you’re considering going into labor, please hold back on that until Week 9.
**
Thanks for being here. If you like what you just read and want it delivered to your email inbox every morning, subscribe to our Substack.
