Who will make the College Football Playoff is clear. The three obvious entrants did nothing to jeopardize their chances, and the chips fell such that Oklahoma is an assumed favorite for the fourth spot. Our model does see some uncertainty in the picture, putting Oklahoma only roughly 88% likely to be selected, while Georgia and Oregon sit at 9% and 3%, respectively, but that’s mostly due to the surprising—relative to precedent—amount of respect the committee’s given Georgia all year, and the uncertainty within our model that derives more from the bottom tiers of the rankings (where the committee, justifiably, presumably spends less time splitting hairs than at the top) than should probably be applied here. This, of course, is a flaw in our model, but we’ll get to all our model’s flaws tomorrow in our recap of how it did, which will also include a look at what we’ll be looking at in the offseason.
The biggest questions now, then, are not who will make the playoff, but who will be ranked where. They’re impactful questions—especially the one that will decide who, between Ohio State and LSU, gets to play Oklahoma instead of Clemson. But they aren’t as impactful as ones would have been regarding who would make the playoff at all.
Here’s where our model thinks each team will land. The number in parentheses is the score our model calculates to sort out the rankings, scaled such that 0 is the bottom of the FBS (UMass) and 100 is the top-ranked team. It’s designed as a gauge of how close teams are, and for context, a reasonable error margin to expect with it is roughly 2.0 in either direction, based on the committee’s decisions so far.
1. LSU (100.0)
2. Ohio State (99.5)
3. Clemson (93.8)
4. Oklahoma (84.9)
5. Georgia (81.9)
6. Oregon (80.8)
7. Florida (78.8)
8. Baylor (78.6)
9. Utah (78.3)
10. Wisconsin (77.1)
11. Alabama (76.9)
12. Penn State (76.9)
13. Auburn (76.3)
14. Michigan (75.0)
15. Notre Dame (74.6)
16. Memphis (73.8)
17. Iowa (73.7)
18. Minnesota (72.9)
19. Boise State (72.0)
20. Appalachian State (70.1)
21. Cincinnati (67.9)
22. Navy (67.8)
23. USC (67.6)
24. Oklahoma State (67.2)
25. Air Force (67.0)
As you can see, LSU and Ohio State are neck-and-neck, but based on the rankings thus far this season and historical precedent, LSU is narrowly more likely to be ranked first overall. Wisconsin is narrowly the Rose Bowl favorite over Penn State. We don’t know who from the ACC will go to the Orange Bowl. Utah should be in the Cotton Bowl, but it could also be Penn State (one feature we’ll be adding to our model next season is a “stickiness” calculation to hold teams in place when they don’t play—the committee hasn’t historically adjusted teams much when they don’t play, even if their résumés change, and while we knew this entering the season, it was too low a priority to build into our model). Of course, there’s plenty of uncertainty. The +/- 2.0 error margin could leave Utah as high as seventh or as low as twelfth, and Wisconsin as high as seventh or as low as thirteenth.
We’ll see where they land.
