We’re a long way from the College Football Playoff. We’re a long way, even, from the release of the first CFP Rankings. But in college football, with a regular season so short its games can be counted on Antonio Alfonseca’s hands, a lot happens each week. Here’s what’s changed after Week Two, looking at our model:
Texas Met Expectations, but Expectations Weren’t Enough
Texas came into Saturday rated nearly ten points worse than LSU. With home field advantage, this worked out to a 6.5-point line, which the Longhorns came half a point shy of covering. They proved they were capable of keeping LSU within one or two scores, but not much else.
Given that the ratings our model uses viewed Texas as ten points worse than LSU, and given that LSU is not in the Clemson/Alabama stratosphere of the ratings, it isn’t surprising that Ehlinger & Co. had only a 7.1% chance of making the playoff entering the weekend. Still, their drop to 2.1% is disappointing, especially because impressive performances by Baylor and Kansas State raised our model’s expectation that Texas will lose somewhere else down the line. This development, combined with their own slight movement downward in the ratings, resulted in Tom Herman’s team’s Big 12 title chances dropping from 21.8% to 13.9%. They’re still the second-most likely school to win the conference, with a plurality of title game appearances. But Oklahoma’s an even larger favorite now than it was before, and as mentioned, Baylor and Kansas State are approaching Oklahoma State for the next seat at the table.
LSU Got a Big Win, but is Running into Some Headwinds
For LSU, the weekend’s marquee victory drove their playoff chances upward, but only from 33.4% to 35.4%. Some of the scarcity of the increase is because the outcome wasn’t unexpected—roughly two-thirds of our simulations last week had the Tigers winning. But some of it was because of developments to the north, which we’ll get into right after we talk about:
Georgia Is Looking a Bit Vulnerable
As measured by magnitude, the two biggest movers downward in our playoff likelihood measurements both won this weekend. And one of them, Georgia, won by 46. So why did their chances drop from 34.9% to 19.8%?
The answer is a little convoluted. Part of it is LSU’s victory giving them a result that should match Georgia’s home triumph over Notre Dame in each team’s second-best-case scenario. Georgia and LSU both have yet to play Florida, Auburn, and Texas A&M. LSU has yet to play Alabama, who Georgia plays in the SEC Championship in the plurality of our simulations. In other words, their schedules are very similar, and should they finish the season with the same number of losses, they project to be on fairly even footing.
Still, that should still result in the two teams’ chances being comparable, and at this point, they’re not. LSU leads Georgia 35.4% to 19.8% in playoff probability. Which, if they were the same quality team, would not make sense. Some of this again, is schedule. LSU’s hypothetical loss to Alabama would come on the road, Georgia’s would come at a neutral site. LSU gets to play all three of Florida/Auburn/Texas A&M at home, while Georgia plays Florida in Jacksonville and Auburn at Auburn. LSU has a big road victory in the bag. Georgia’s non-conference victory would only be a home one. But again, even with that, the gap wouldn’t be that large if the two teams were still viewed equally in quality.
The bigger problem for Georgia seems to be that their season-opening victory over Vanderbilt is starting to draw some skepticism after Vanderbilt fell to Purdue by a similar margin. Georgia’s contest was more decisive in terms of game control than Purdue’s, but to their credit, Purdue never let the Commodores get within single digits after scoring to open the second half. With Purdue losing to Nevada to open the year, and Nevada getting obliterated at the hands of Oregon this weekend, there’s a bad combination of events pushing the ratings’ perceptions of Georgia down a bit. This doesn’t mean Georgia is actually any worse than they were expected to be. It just means that on the aggregate, the ratings think they’re a bit worse than they thought a few days ago.
The last notable change affecting Georgia is the one we mentioned in the LSU blurb—developments up north:
Wisconsin and Ohio State Impressed
One of the forces pushing Georgia down and holding LSU back is the rise of Wisconsin and Ohio State. Ohio State was already expected to be one of the best teams in the country, but its demolition of Cincinnati on Saturday still got computers’ attention. Similarly, Wisconsin turning in its second straight near-flawless performance helped its cause. Ohio State’s playoff chances rose from 18.9% to 41.4%. Wisconsin’s rose from 8.3% to 21.4%.
Their own performances, though, weren’t the biggest thing pushing them upwards. There was also the impact of a poor game by their mutual neighbor:
Michigan Might Be in Trouble
Michigan’s playoff chances took the biggest hit, by magnitude, of anyone’s, dropping from 20.7% to 3.5%. Entering the weekend, the Wolverines were essentially co-conference favorites with Ohio State and Penn State. Now, they’re in the realm of Michigan State, trailing even Iowa by a wide margin.
Did they lose? No. But taking two overtimes to beat Army, a slightly-below-the-median FBS team by the ratings, raised concerns. Army runs an unconventional offense, but a playoff offense should score more than 24 points against the Black Knights, especially when given two extra possessions from the Army 25 yard-line. It was a bad day for Jim Harbaugh’s crew, and it lightens the road for both Wisconsin, who plays Michigan at home in two weeks, and Ohio State.
But while Georgia’s chances nearly halved, and Michigan’s were cut by about five-sixths, they at least don’t have losses to their names. Which isn’t something that can be said of these guys:
Washington Is Pretty Much Toast
Washington entered the weekend the Pac-12 favorite. Only a 32.9% favorite, but the favorite. They were, correspondingly, the Pac-12’s best playoff hope, with a 12.2% likelihood of making the field. This week, they make the playoffs in only five of our 1,000 simulations, an 11.7% drop in magnitude and a reflection of the near-erasing of their hopes.
The Pac-12, at this point in history, has the worst chance of making the playoffs of the Power Five conferences year in and year out. It doesn’t have a clear top power capable of beating the Texas A&M’s of the world on the road. It doesn’t have a top tier that can make up for some unsightly bottom-of-the-standings squads. It’s missed the playoff the most times of any Power Five league, and it’s about as likely right now that Notre Dame will get its second playoff appearance this year as it is that the Pac-12 will get its third.
And what did the Pac-12 favorite do? They went and lost to Cal at home. They turned it over twice. They managed fewer yards per both pass and run than the visitors. And those are visitors the ratings don’t even place in college football’s top 50. They’re visitors who only won the Pac-12 in one of our 1,000 simulations even after beating Washington.
It was a dud by Washington. And the consequence of it is:
The Pac-12 Has Its Work Cut Out for It
Oregon did impress in their total victory over Nevada, but there are a small window of instances in which they both win out and play well enough while doing so that it persuades the committee to put them in despite their loss to Auburn: a 3.5% window, to put a number on it. Utah, now the co-conference favorite, has a slightly better opportunity, at 5.6%, and Washington State’s 3.0% chance isn’t nothing. USC, too, showed some life, pushing themselves up to 1.2% in their decisive win over Stanford. But the SEC and Big Ten each have three teams with a better chance than Utah. The Big 12 has Oklahoma. The ACC has Clemson. The field has Notre Dame. Utah’s chance is only the 10th-best, and it likely requires perfection if not also some luck. Their chances are similar to the notably slim chances facing a certain Group of Five school:
UCF Had a Good Week
The Knights pummeled FAU, and while that isn’t much to be proud of, it’s better than not pummeling FAU. Especially since FAU, on the road, might turn out to be one of UCF’s tougher games this season.
UCF has only a 5.1% chance of making the playoff, according to our model, despite a 72.5% chance of winning the AAC. It’s a playoff chance that likely requires complete domination of their schedule, strong years by some other AAC teams (Memphis, perhaps?), solid finishes by Stanford and Pitt, and a lot of losses elsewhere. It might also hinge on public pressure to finally let the Knights have their chance. But it’s more than marginally better than the 1.4% chance UCF had entering the weekend.
Clemson’s No Longer Alone as the Favorite
In the ratings, Clemson dropped below Alabama after beating Texas A&M by two touchdowns, which is a ridiculous-sounding sentence given that our model places Texas A&M in the top twelve. But it takes a lot to stay ahead of Alabama.
Clemson’s still the clear-cut most likely team to make the playoff, with a 91.8% chance of being one of the chosen four. And it’s effectively tied with Alabama in national championship probability, at a number close to 40%. In tiers, it goes Alabama/Clemson, a big gap, another big gap, a few more big gaps, LSU/Ohio State, Oklahoma/Georgia, Wisconsin/Penn State, Notre Dame, and then a couple handfuls of teams. The biggest divides fall after number two on the list and number nine on the list, with an easy way of thinking of the distinctions being that the top nine control their fate, and the top two are expected to control theirs without much trouble. Beyond those nine, everyone either needs a varying degree of help or a stunning performance the rest of the way.
