It wasn’t a loud weekend in college football, but moves were made. Florida, Michigan, and Cincinnati all picked up good wins. Ohio State continued its tour de force. LSU, Oklahoma, Penn State, and Wisconsin each stayed in control of their respective fates. Georgia pulled away from Tennessee to avoid disaster.
Here’s everything that changed over the weekend, with insights from our model:
Auburn Might Have Needed to Beat Florida. It Didn’t.
With the schedule Auburn has, beating Florida on the road might have been necessary to make the playoff field. Not because losing in the Swamp is damaging, but because it’s hard to imagine Gus Malzahn’s team making it through games with LSU, Georgia, and Alabama without losing again and missing a shot at the SEC Championship. Their playoff chances are still 6.9%, ninth-best in the country, but that’s a long ways down from 19.9%, where they entered the week.
Florida, as was expected, about exactly doubled their playoff chances with the win, climbing to 5.5%. They’re still outside the thick of the chase, but their chances are rising entering Saturday’s trip to Baton Rouge.
Elsewhere in the SEC, Alabama and LSU’s playoff hopes rose on news of Auburn’s loss, while Georgia’s hopes dipped after an ugly first half in Knoxville gave some of the ratings our model uses pause.
Iowa’s Hopes Dropped. Michigan’s Didn’t Really Rise.
Iowa’s a solid football team. But the path in which they lost to Wisconsin, Wisconsin won the Big Ten, and the Hawkeyes drafted their way into the field amidst chaos elsewhere dried up this week when they lost to Michigan. Now, Iowa likely needs to beat Penn State at home and Wisconsin on the road just to make the Big Ten Championship, a game in which they’d project to be significant underdogs. They were on the fringe last week with a 2.8% chance of making the field. Now, that likelihood is only 0.3%.
For Michigan, it was an important win, but not enough to move the needle. The Wolverines, whose playoff odds are only 0.7%, should still be considered a non-contender in all aspects for the time being. Their next opportunity to change that comes in two weeks at Happy Valley.
While the Big Ten’s third tier beat itself up, its top tier—Ohio State—kicked Sparty to the curb, pushing themselves even higher as the favorites to both make the playoff (87.6%) and win the national championship (32.5%). Wisconsin also rose, as Iowa’s loss gave the Badgers some breathing room in the West and confirmed they’d be solidly favored if the two met today. Penn State dipped, mostly due to Ohio State’s continued ascent.
Comparing the AAC and Pac-12’s Playoff Hopes
Yes, you read that correctly. The Pac-12 is being compared to a Group of Five league, and not just for clicks. There’s some data behind this.
With Washington losing another head-shaker to a middling bay area team, the only team from the Pac-12 that made the playoff in any of our 1,000 simulations this week was Oregon. In the AAC, both Cincinnati and Memphis made it, the former after defeating mighty (contextually within the conference) UCF.
Oregon’s hopes, of course, dwarf those of the team that lost 42-0 to Ohio State and the team whose best win might wind up being over the team that lost 42-0 to Ohio State. But the fact that the Pac-12 only has one team with any somewhat likely path of finding its way into the four-team field this early in the season is significant. The league is probably better, top to bottom, than the ACC. But with no Clemson to cover its flaws, it’s in a bad place.
It bears mentioning that Utah was at 0.3% likely to make the playoff just a week ago, and little really changed on their résumé to provoke them dropping off the list. But SMU was also on our radar as 0.1% likely, and their résumé’s only hit was TCU losing its first conference game. Yes, the Pac-12 is better than the AAC. Yes, its playoff chances as a whole are better (Oregon’s at a lofty 2.8% compared to 0.2% for Cincy and 0.1% for Memphis). But in this week’s edition of “Oof, the Pac-12 is in a bad place,” the AAC is the rhetorical weapon of choice.
Group of Five Watch
Since we’ve already started on the Group of Five, let’s keep going. Boise State returned to the playoff field in three of our simulations after being shut out last week. Appalachian State also returned, though just in one simulation. Louisiana-Lafayette was shut out after making it once last week, but is still very much on our radar. It’s hugely unlikely any of these teams will actually make the playoff, but before their odds all drop to zero, it’s nice to keep an eye on them, since this exercise also give us an idea of which team will represent the mid-majors in a New Year’s Six bowl.
The Big 12 Seems to Be Settling into Place…
…for now, anyway. The Red River Shootout has a way of changing things. As it stands, Oklahoma’s far and away the favorite to win the league, winning its title game in 70.3% of simulations. Texas is clearly next in line, at 15.0%. Then comes Baylor, at 8.6%, followed by Iowa State at 3.3%.
Oklahoma State’s loss to Texas Tech helped clarify what was a very muddled picture behind Texas, as did Baylor’s thorough defeat of Kansas State on the road. It’s a tight league ability-wise, but at least for the time being, the standings are shaking into convenient layers.
Virginia’s Gap Widened in the Coastal
Struggles against North Carolina aside, Clemson’s far and away the favorite in the ACC. They win it in 89.9% of this week’s simulations. But damaging losses by Miami and Duke (to Virginia Tech and Pitt, respectively) shook them from the Cavaliers’ heels, leaving UVA as finally the clear team to beat in the Coastal. With a two-game lead over the Hurricanes, even a loss Friday night in Miami probably wouldn’t shake Bronco Mendenhall’s team from its perch.
Notre Dame Watch
The Irish won convincingly over Bowling Green, but that isn’t saying much. Their standing slipped to 6.2% likely to make the field, mostly due to a lack of chaos elsewhere and the confirmation that Michigan is probably competent on at least one side of the ball.
Playoff and Championship Tiers
It makes the most sense to think of the playoff and championship races in tiers, rather than ranked. Here are groupings for each, along with likelihoods from our model:
National Championship, with odds to win in parentheses:
Tier One: Ohio State (32.5%), Alabama (29.9%)
Tier Two: Clemson (15.2%)
Tier Three: Georgia (5.7%), LSU (5.2%), Oklahoma (5.0%)
Tier Four: Penn State (2.9%), Wisconsin (2.0%)
Tier Five: Auburn (0.6%), Florida (0.5%)
Tier Six: Notre Dame (0.3%)
Playoff, with odds to appear in parentheses:
Tier One: Ohio State (87.6%)
Tier Two: Alabama (74.2%), Clemson (71.3%)
Tier Three: Oklahoma (34.5%), Georgia (33.7%)
Tier Four: LSU (27.8%), Wisconsin (24.4%), Penn State (20.5%)
Tier Five: Auburn (6.9%), Notre Dame (6.2%), Florida (5.5%)
Tier Six: Oregon (2.8%)
The Best Teams Right Now
Finally, here are the best teams in the country right now based on the aggregate ratings our model uses, with how many points better they are than a decent Division III team in the parentheses. We use North Dakota State as the cutoff for the sake of interest and consistency. Note the absence of a second ACC team.
1. Alabama (98.0)
2. Ohio State (96.8)
3. Clemson (93.1)
4. Oklahoma (92.0)
5. Georgia (91.7)
6. LSU (91.7)
7. Penn State (88.7)
8. Wisconsin (87.3)
9. Auburn (86.7)
10. Florida (85.7)
11. Notre Dame (85.7)
12. Oregon (85.2)
13. Missouri (82.5)
14. Texas (82.2)
15. Michigan (81.9)
16. Washington (81.6)
17. UCF (81.1)
18. Iowa (80.7)
19. Utah (80.5)
20. Michigan State (80.4)
21. Iowa State (80.1)
22. Texas A&M (80.1)
23. Oklahoma State (78.8)
24. Baylor (78.5)
25. USC (76.9)
26. Mississippi State (76.8)
27. Memphis (76.3)
28. TCU (75.4)
29. Cincinnati (75.0)
30. Washington State (74.9)
31. Minnesota (74.9)
32. Arizona State (74.6)
33. South Carolina (74.5)
34. North Dakota State (73.8)
