Ohio State is No. 1 in the first College Football Playoff rankings, but isn’t the top team in my projections. Despite not playing tough schedules yet, Georgia and Michigan are still the teams that won the national title most often in the simulations.
Michigan, Georgia, Ohio State and Florida State made the CFP in more than 60 percent of my projections. Georgia got a boost from not only beating Florida, but blowing out the Gators. Ohio State cleared a semi tricky hurdle at Wisconsin to move up a bit. Florida State continues to get a boost from the ACC not being viewed highly by my model. Plus, Oklahoma losing virtually eliminated the chances of an undefeated Power 5 team being left out (and made it more likely the Big Ten can get two teams in).
Only 10 teams won the national title more than 1 percent of the time. Only 11 teams made the CFP more than 1 percent of the time. With a number of big games taking place on Saturday, we should see a decent move in the projections next week.
Here’s how the model works: I have developed a season simulator that produces odds for winning the national title, making the College Football Playoff, and winning conference and division titles. After every simulation is complete, I have developed a model that selects playoff teams. The playoff selection model is quite simple and very similar, in my opinion, to the committee’s selection process in that it creates a “resume strength rating,” derived from prior resume strength ratings, past playoff rankings and playoff selections for each season.
Here’s how the national title contenders rank after Week 9, according to my model.
Projected national title and College Football Playoff chances
| team | title | playoff |
|---|---|---|
|
23.61% |
72.7% |
|
|
23.55% |
74.7% |
|
|
15.5% |
71.3% |
|
|
11.7% |
60.2% |
|
|
9.1% |
41.4% |
|
|
7.3% |
27.3% |
|
|
3.9% |
20.6% |
|
|
1.8% |
10.7% |
|
|
1.6% |
9.1% |
|
|
1.4% |
7.6% |
|
|
0.3% |
2.7% |
|
|
0.2% |
0.8% |
|
|
0.06% |
0.26% |
|
|
0.06% |
0.2% |
|
|
0.04% |
0.04% |
|
|
0.02% |
0.16% |
|
|
0.0% |
0.03% |
|
|
0.0% |
0.02% |
|
|
0.0% |
0.02% |
|
|
0.0% |
0.01% |
|
|
0.0% |
0.01% |
|
|
0.0% |
0.01% |
|
|
0.0% |
0.01% |
Fun random simulation result
What does one do if all three Big Ten teams finish with one loss, Washington goes undefeated and every other team ends up with two losses? That happened in one of my simulations and I had to share the result.
Washington 13-0 (Pac-12 champ)
Ohio State 12-1 (Big Ten champ)
Michigan 11-1
Penn State 11-1
Georgia 11-2
Oklahoma 11-2 (Big 12 champ)
Florida State 11-2
Alabama 11-2 (SEC champ)
Biggest risers in national title chances
Oregon: +4.3% (3% to 7.3%)
Georgia: +4% (19.6% to 23.6%)
Florida State: +3.7% (8% to 11.7%)
No surprises here. All three of these teams won away from home in dominant fashion.
Biggest fallers in national title chances
Oklahoma: -7.5% (11.4% to 3.9%)
Texas: -4.9% (6.5% to 1.6%)
Alabama: -2.3% (3.7% to 1.4%)
Texas takes on Kansas State without Quinn Ewers and is favored by less than a touchdown. The Wildcats’ recent surge makes it a bit less likely Texas wins out to make the Playoff.
Biggest risers in CFP chances
Georgia: +16.2% (58.5% to 74.7%)
Florida State: +15.9% (44.3% to 60.2%)
Ohio State: +15.6% (55.7% to 71.3%)
Biggest fallers in CFP chances
Oklahoma: -27.7% (48.3% to 20.6%)
Texas: -18.2% (27.3% to 9.1%)
Alabama: -10.6% (18.2% to 7.6%)
(Photo of Ladd McConkey: David Rosenblum / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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