We are now five weeks in, and because each week is a significant part of college football’s season-long sample, a lot changed even without contenders losing. Here’s what went down, and what our model thinks:
Big Ten Movement
Ohio State throttled Nebraska. Penn State pummeled Maryland. Michigan made Rutgers look like Rutgers. Wisconsin let Northwestern look adequate at football.
The most notable result, looking at our model, was that Ohio State is now the most likely team to make the playoff by a good margin, cracking the field in 83.0% of our 1,000 simulations. Some of that, of course, came with help from Clemson, whom we’ll discuss further down. But a lot of it is Ohio State showing, in their start thus far, that they’re just as talented as the teams with which Urban Meyer topped the Big Ten repeatedly during his tenure. Their remaining schedule isn’t easy—home games against Wisconsin and Penn State, The Game in Ann Arbor, visits from Michigan State and Maryland, and road contests at Northwestern and Rutgers (ask anyone who’s followed Ohio State whether this decade’s Buckeyes should take an inferior conference opponent lightly on the road). But overall, Ohio State is in a good place, and because they have an easier path to the playoff than Alabama, they can fairly be considered a national title co-favorite.
Penn State was also a big riser. Their victory in College Park was impressive, and it helped ease concerns following those struggles against Pitt two weeks back. The Nittany Lions jumped from 9.0% likely to make the field to 23.0% likely, now checking in ahead of even LSU, in the sixth-best position overall in that race.
Michigan showed they can score in at least some situations, posting 52 in what became Chris Ash’s last game at Rutgers. This showing, combined with other events (again, we’ll get to Clemson), doubled their playoff chances, from an insignificant 0.4% to a still insignificant 0.8%. A good thing, but such a long way to go.
Wisconsin fell, in what may have simply been a necessary re-calibration. After looking nearly flawless through their season’s first four games, the Badgers struggled to handle Northwestern to the degree expected by the aggregate ratings our model employs. Northwestern is not very good this year, so a nine-point home victory against them is not the most positive result. It’s perfectly excusable—Northwestern has a somewhat well-earned reputation for being feisty even when bad, and the act of coming out flat after blasting Michigan is something 18-23 year-olds might be expected to do. But it’s still a data point, and when it’s combined with the positive ones Penn State and Ohio State posted, Wisconsin’s now down from 33.0% likely to make the playoff to only 17.3% likely.
More on the Big Ten when we get to—as you know by now—Clemson. But first:
Auburn Rises
Auburn beat the pants off Mississippi State one week after beating Texas A&M on the road. They may be only about half as likely as LSU to win the SEC, but they’re almost even with them in playoff probability, a trend that’s reflecting a variety of things: Oregon being twice as likely as Texas to be a playoff team, LSU having a higher potential for a non-conference loss than Auburn (it’s a small potential, but Utah State’s a lot better than Samford), and a combination of SEC home/road scheduling that makes LSU more likely to win the conference but Auburn more likely to beat Alabama. Things are going as well as could have been scripted for the Tigers. They’re a contender.
Clemson Looked Bad
Clemson did not lose. Goodness, though. A one-point win at North Carolina is not a good sign for the defending champions. On the heels of the loss, the ratings we use downgraded them by five points. That’s a lot of points—it’s the same as the difference between the ninth-best team in the country and the 21st-best. Their odds to win the ACC championship dropped in our model from 94.6% to 88.2%, and much more significantly, their odds to make the playoff dropped from 88.0% to 69.7%. Before Saturday, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Clemson would win the ACC and make the playoff. Now, it’s not so certain.
This is a situation our model’s well-equipped to evaluate. It evaluates margin of victory, adjusting for strength of opponent, which gives us a gauge of how the committee will evaluate Clemson using advanced methods (SP+, Game Control, FPI, etc.) and unadvanced methods (the eye test). It gives credit to teams for their two best victories—both of which, for Clemson, may come against unranked foes when all’s said and done. It punishes teams severely for bad losses, like those Ohio State turned in the last two years—these are a risk for Clemson, since if the Tigers lose at all, it figures to be to a mediocre team, seeing as the ACC does not have a better-than-mediocre team right now beyond Clemson. The ACC may get a team or two beyond Clemson into the committee’s Top 25, if said team just manages to win a lot of games against fellow mediocrity, but the risk is very real that the league will have exactly one Top 25 team by season’s end, with Clemson looking for help when it comes to their résumé.
Clemson goes undefeated in 60.3% of our simulations. Clemson loses only one game in 31.1% of simulations. Going 13-0 as a member of a Power Five conference, no matter how weak, will get a team into the playoff barring a stunningly strong field. Our model, then, is effectively saying if Clemson loses, it only has a one-in-three chance of cracking the top four.
This is where Ohio State, Penn State, and Wisconsin tie back in. It appears right now that a one-loss Big Ten champion, no matter who, would have a strong argument against a one-loss ACC champion. It’s also plausible that a one-loss Big Ten team that does not win the conference would have a case. This is why while Ohio State’s conference title chances are only 60.8%, its playoff chances are 83.0%. For Penn State, the numbers are 10.7% and 23.0%, respectively. For Wisconsin, they’re each 17.3%, but the simulations in which Wisconsin makes the playoff aren’t exclusively those in which it wins the Big Ten. Because it’s in the West, it has a higher chance of losing twice and winning the conference than its Eastern rivals, by virtue of needing to edge fewer good teams (no disrespect to Iowa, but Iowa is not Penn State, and even Indiana is rated better than Minnesota).
Of course, it was only one week, and Clemson may turn on the jets from here and be perfectly fine. But it shapes our perception of them, and it doesn’t help that perception that Texas A&M—Clemson’s best opponent so far—just struggled mightily against a team rated between Western Michigan and North Texas. North Carolina’s rated as better than only about half the ACC. Clemson needs to figure things out.
Good News for The Sooners
Top to bottom, the Big 12 may be on par with the Big Ten this year. But at the top tier, it’s lacking that second and third team the Big Ten has right now. This is part of why it’s only 41.6% likely to send a team to the playoff—a loss for Oklahoma would probably come to a worse team than one suffered by Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin.
Still, the Sooners are benefitting from the Big 12 being a stronger league than the ACC, and from Clemson looking flawed. Their playoff chances rose from 29.6% to 39.5%. They’re where they want to be with the Red River Shootout two weeks away.
Pac-12 Watch
The Pac-12’s already sorry cumulative playoff chances got a bit worse, dropping from 4.3% to 3.4%. The Pac-12 needs chaos elsewhere, and it needs it fast. It then probably needs Oregon to win out, since the Ducks’ playoff chances are about ten times better than those of Utah, who’s next in line.
Notre Dame Watch
Notre Dame won, but it wasn’t always pretty, especially on the offensive side of things. Meanwhile, Michigan looked competent for the first time all year, making that game a bit scarier, and USC no longer appears likely to become a very nice win. Michigan loses four or fewer games in only 20.2% of simulations. USC does so only 11.0% of the time. Virginia loses three or fewer in 24.4% of sim’s. It’s hard to see many other teams on Notre Dame’s schedule becoming Top 25 wins. The Irish might achieve an 11-1 mark (it’s 19.1% likely). Their overall strength of schedule might be fine. But their good wins will be lacking.
Group of Five Watch: The Sun Belt is Doing Well for Itself
SMU made the playoff in exactly one simulation for the second straight week, confirming their presence in this space last week was not a fluke. The Mustangs look good, TCU might actually contend for Big 12 runner-up, and the AAC offers a few shots at nice wins.
Appalachian State and Boise State didn’t cut it in any simulations this week, but having been there last week, we’ll still keep our eye out for them to swing back in. As a whole, it’s getting later and later for something good to happen for Group of Five schools wanting to do the unthinkable and make the playoff. The later the season goes without chaos unfolding, the poorer the chance it will. And they need a lot of chaos.
The only non-SMU team to make the playoff in any simulation this week was Louisiana-Lafayette. The Ragin’ Cajuns are currently projected to be about one-point underdogs when they host Appalachian State next Wednesday night (mark your calendars), and the path only gets easier from there. Their presence in one of 1,000 simulations was probably a fluke, especially since they already have a loss (by ten, at home, to Mississippi State), but had it occurred in one of 10,000 simulations, it might not have been so surprising. Regardless, the fact they’re close enough to make it in some universe is encouraging for the Sun Belt, because it helps distinguish them as a potentially capable conference in the future.
Some FAU News
The biggest riser in conference title probability this week was FAU, climbing from 14.5% likely to win Conference USA up to 34.3% likely. This was more a product of Marshall getting thwacked by Cincinnati than anything else, but they’re the favorite now, which speaks well of what Lane Kiffin’s done there so far, and could help fuel the flames of various rumors of him returning to a Power Five program this winter.
Playoff/National Championship Tiers
It makes sense to compare teams’ playoff chances in tiers. The same goes for their national title hopes. Here are tiers for both, and yes, they’re a bit different:
Playoff
Tier 1: Ohio State (83.0% likely to make the field)
Tier 2: Alabama (71.5%), Clemson (69.7%)
Tier 3: Oklahoma (39.5%), Georgia (35.5%)
Tier 4: Penn State (23.0%), LSU (20.9%), Auburn (19.9%), Wisconsin (17.3%)
Tier 5: Notre Dame (6.5%)
Tier 6: Oregon (2.9%), Iowa (2.8%), Florida (2.7%)
National Championship
Tier 1: Ohio State (28.7% likely to win it all), Alabama (27.8%)
Tier 2: Clemson (16.1%)
Tier 3: Oklahoma (8.2%)
Tier 4: Georgia (6.3%)
Tier 5: LSU (4.7%)
Tier 6: Auburn (2.7%), Wisconsin (2.5%), Penn State (2.2%)
The Best Teams
Finally, here are the best teams in the country right now, according to those ratings we use. The number beside each is how many points better they’d be than an arbitrary Division III team, and we set the cutoff at North Dakota State because that’s something we enjoy doing.
1. Alabama (97.7)
2. Ohio State (96.1)
3. Clemson (93.1)
4. Oklahoma (91.9)
5. Georgia (91.5)
6. LSU (90.2)
7. Auburn (88.3)
8. Penn State (88.0)
9. Wisconsin (85.6)
10. Washington (85.1)
11. Notre Dame (84.9)
12. Oregon (84.8)
13. Florida (84.7)
14. Texas (82.3)
15. UCF (81.2)
16. Michigan (81.5)
17. Iowa (81.4)
18. Missouri (81.0)
19. Michigan State (80.9)
20. Utah (80.9)
21. Oklahoma State (80.7)
22. Texas A&M (79.9)
23. TCU (78.5)
24. Mississippi State (77.6)
25. Iowa State (77.2)
26. USC (77.0)
27. Washington State (75.4)
28. Memphis (75.0)
29. Baylor (74.8)
30. Kansas State (74.7)
31. Arizona State (74.6)
32. Cincinnati (74.4)
33. South Carolina (74.3)
34. Miami (74.0)
35. Duke (73.8)
36. Boise State (73.5)
37. Minnesota (73.4)
38. SMU (73.2)
39. Virginia (72.4)
40. Utah State (72.4)
41. North Dakota State (72.2)
