If you play enough games, upsets are bound to happen, which is why while Illinois beating Wisconsin was stunning as an individual game result, the fact that one of the seven teams with a clear shot at the playoff entering Week Eight lost that shot is not altogether a shock.
Here’s how what happened in Champaign impacted the playoff landscape, and where the ripples from all the other games left us, all with help from our model:
Down Goes Bucky
Last week in this space, Wisconsin was discussed as having a slightly stronger playoff probability than Oklahoma. The Big Ten was, at the time, enjoying roughly a 50/50 shot at sending multiple teams to the College Football Playoff. Then, Saturday happened.
Wisconsin’s loss, of course, decimates the Badgers’ playoff hopes. Even winning out, including in the Big Ten Championship, might not be enough to get the Badgers into the field. They still have the best chance of anyone in the West to win the Big Ten (they’re at 11.0%, Minnesota and Iowa are at 6.3% and 1.5%, respectively), but their playoff chances are only 3.6%, implying that simply doing enough to win their conference won’t be enough to guarantee them a playoff spot. This is the Ohio State situation from the past two years.
It’s bad news for the Big Ten as a whole, of course, too. The conference’s chances of sending multiple teams to the playoff are still solid, at 33.5%, but they aren’t the roughly 50% they were a week ago. Still, at least so far, it appears hugely unlikely the league will continue its playoff drought, sending no one for the third straight year. That probability is only 1.7%, more than a 50-to-1 longshot at this point. Conference favorite Ohio State has only two games remaining that one would expect to be viewed as damaging losses (home against Maryland, away against Rutgers), and at this point is the most likely team in the country to make the playoff field. They could, of course, miss it, but a lot has to go wrong for the entire league to be left out again.
Nationally, LSU is a beneficiary of this. Of all the teams looking to play the role of 2017 Alabama—an 11-1 team with a respectable loss, some good wins, and lots of love from both mathematical evaluations and the devastatingly subjective eye test—LSU was already the most likely, but now counts pretty much only Penn State and Ohio State as their competition in that lane, with Wisconsin banished. Clemson is also marginally helped—there were plenty of scenarios in our model where a one-loss or even a two-loss Wisconsin without a Big Ten title found the field ahead of a one-loss ACC Champion. In other words, Clemson’s margin for error has increased. The same can be said for Oklahoma.
There Are Still Two Tiers at the Top
Entering the week, Ohio State, Alabama, and Clemson were clearly in their own tier at the top of playoff likelihood. Each had better than a two-in-three chance of making the field, and each needed no help to get there. Each was expected to take care of business, and each still is.
Behind them, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, LSU, and Penn State were all between 29% and 44% likely to crack the top four. Wisconsin, of course, is gone from that group, so Oklahoma, LSU, and Penn State are now left, with Oklahoma and LSU each around 45% likely to make it and Penn State at 35%. Each, as with their neighbors upstairs, controls their fate, but all three are more likely than not to have something go wrong. For LSU and Penn State, there are scheduled contests with Alabama and Ohio State in which they figure to be underdogs. Oklahoma will be favored the rest of the way, but Iowa State’s yet to visit, the Sooners still have to go to Waco, and Bedlam’s on the road this year. OU’s the sizable Big 12 favorite, but failing to go 13-0 is a distinct, and troubling, possibility.
By the way, now’s a good time to mention that Mizzou’s loss to Vanderbilt pretty much entirely erased their playoff chances even in the situation in which they win their appeal and have their postseason ban removed.
Tua Tagovailoa’s Ankle
Our model doesn’t explicitly account for the fact that Alabama’s starting quarterback and Heisman candidate underwent a minor surgery yesterday morning for a high-ankle sprain. It doesn’t note that he won’t play this weekend against Arkansas, or that he probably won’t be at full strength when LSU visits Tuscaloosa in three weeks’ time. But it is affected by the fact that Alabama didn’t look its best against Tennessee this weekend, which may have been a product of missing Tagovailoa for part of the game. The Crimson Tide now trail Ohio State by about a point in the aggregate ratings we use as an input, and only project to be 6.5-point favorites over LSU. All of this has contributed to a situation in which Alabama was one of the biggest downward movers in the field this week in terms of distance traveled (as opposed to the relative magnitude of the move), slipping from 76.2% likely to make the playoff to 71.4%. LSU, meanwhile, was our biggest riser.
What to Make of Oregon and Utah
The narrative has a way of resurrecting the Pac-12 by lowering the standards that justify paying attention to them as playoff contenders. Drop below 10%? They’re done. Until they rise a few basis points a week later.
The league’s 8.5% chance of making the playoff is substantial enough to keep paying attention. But it isn’t strong enough to justify including Oregon or Utah in serious discussions. Yes, both are primed to take advantage of chaos above them, but Utah’s loss to USC is not a good one, and even in the best of scenarios it will likely lack the high-end victories the committee (and media) like to see. Oregon, meanwhile, is caught in an unenviable position when it comes to their loss to Auburn.
Two of the committee’s explicitly designated criteria are head-to-head results and results against common opponents. Oregon’s neutral-site, last-minute loss to Auburn is a good loss. But if LSU beats Auburn, they’ve got an advantage over the Ducks in any direct comparisons. If Auburn beats LSU, and let’s say Georgia, but not Alabama, Auburn’s head-to-head victory will be weighed against the fact that Oregon, in any scenario in which they’re even being considered, possesses one fewer loss and a conference title.
Auburn, then, is effectively boxing Oregon out of the playoff picture. More chaos could open further doors, but in addition to waiting for that, and continuing to win themselves, Oregon needs to hope Auburn does the same.
What to Make of Baylor and Minnesota
Farther down our ledger, Baylor and Minnesota are undefeated teams playing in Power Five conferences. So far, Baylor’s best victory came at home over Iowa State on a last-minute field goal. Minnesota’s is a home triumph over a Nebraska that only has four wins and isn’t favored, as of right now, in any of their last five games.
Both Minnesota and Baylor, like the Ohio State’s and Penn State’s and Oklahoma’s of the world, control their respective fates. If either does steer themselves into the playoff, though, it will be a big surprise. Both appear to be good teams. Their undefeated status is still more a function of schedule order than quality of play.
Group of Five News
Boise State’s loss might have hurt the Group of Five’s playoff hopes, but those hopes were so thin that it’s nonsense to make much of it. Our model still sees Cincinnati, SMU, and Appalachian State as the most likely candidates for the mid-majors’ New Year’s Six bowl bid, but none have a realistic playoff chance at this point.
There were, though, some big movements in conference championship probabilities this week within the Group of Five. Ball State became the MAC favorite after pounding Toledo, with Western Michigan’s loss to Eastern Michigan opening up room. Louisiana Tech climbed in Conference USA with their victory over Southern Miss, while FAU’s loss to Marshall plunged the Owls out of the cockpit in that race. Boise State is still the favorite in the Mountain West, but is no longer above the 50% threshold, while San Diego State and Air Force climbed on news that the Broncos might not be as good as the numbers previously implied. And in the Sun Belt, Louisiana-Lafayette earned the upper hand in the West Division by taking down Arkansas State.
The Best Teams
Every week, we list the best teams in college football, according to those ratings we use in our model (our formula blends SP+, FPI, Massey, and Sagarin, giving more weight to the stronger systems). Here they are, along with how many points worse they’re expected to be than Ohio State on a neutral field:
1. Ohio State (0.0)
2. Alabama (0.9)
3. Clemson (4.2)
4. LSU (5.4)
5. Oklahoma (5.5)
6. Georgia (9.0)
7. Penn State (9.7)
8. Auburn (10.5)
9. Wisconsin (11.7)
10. Oregon (11.8)
11. Florida (12.9)
12. Utah (13.4)
13. Notre Dame (13.6)
14. Washington (15.3)
15. Iowa State (16.4)
16. Michigan (16.7)
17. Baylor (17.8)
18. UCF (18.0)
19. USC (18.6)
20. Texas (18.6)
21. Texas A&M (19.2)
22. Iowa (19.2)
23. Missouri (19.5)
24. Minnesota (19.7)
25. Michigan State (20.5)
26. Memphis (20.6)
27. Washington State (21.6)
28. Cincinnati (22.0)
29. Oklahoma State (22.4)
30. TCU (22.9)
31. South Carolina (23.1)
32. Appalachian State (23.8)
33. Boise State (23.9)
34. Virginia (24.0)
35. Indiana (24.1)
36. Arizona State (24.4)
37. SMU (24.7)
38. North Dakota State (25.0)
Some News About Our Model
I mentioned this on Twitter, but our model is now running 4,000 simulations every week instead of 1,000. While we’d like to increase this further, to get more and more precision (and ultimately create features where you, the reader, can see the results of virtually every possible combination of outcomes), we’re still pleased with the improvements this makes to our error margins, which are now roughly half as wide as they were before.
