Ohio State is the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff’s initial rankings, but it’s not the best team in my prediction. Although Georgia and Michigan are not playing tough schedules yet, they are still the teams that have won the national title the most times in the simulations.
Michigan, Georgia, Ohio State and Florida State factored the CFP into more than 60 percent of my projections. Georgia got a boost because it not only beat Florida, but also eliminated the Gators. Ohio State overcame a somewhat difficult hurdle in Wisconsin and improved a bit. Florida State continues to get a boost as the ACC isn’t particularly valued by my model. Additionally, Oklahoma’s loss virtually eliminated the likelihood of an undefeated Power 5 team being left out (and made it more likely that the Big Ten could accommodate two teams).
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 some decent movement in the forecasts for next week.
Here’s how the model works: I developed a season simulator that calculates odds for winning the national title, making the College Football Playoff, and winning conference and division titles. After each simulation is completed, I developed a model that selects playoff teams. The playoff selection model is quite simple and, in my opinion, very similar to the committee’s selection process in that it creates a “Resumé Strength Rating” derived from previous 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.
Predicted national title and College Football Playoff chances
| team | title | play out |
|---|---|---|
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% |
Funny random simulation result
What do you do when all three Big Ten teams finish with one loss, Washington goes undefeated and every other team ends up with two losses? This happened in one of my simulations and I had to report the result.
Washington 13-0 (Pac-12 champions)
Ohio State 12-1 (Big Ten Champion)
Michigan 11-1
Penn State 11-1
Georgia 11-2
Oklahoma 11-2 (Big 12 champion)
Florida State 11-2
Alabama 11-2 (SEC Champion)
Biggest movers in terms of 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%)
There are no surprises here. All three teams won comfortably away from home.
Biggest losses 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 faces Kansas State without Quinn Ewers and has an advantage of less than a touchdown. The Wildcats’ recent surge makes it a little less likely that Texas will win and make the playoffs.
Biggest movers in CFP odds
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%)
The Biggest Losses in CFP Odds
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 by Ladd McConkey: David Rosenblum / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)