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UGA would become an ironclad playoff pick (which we’re trying to shy away from) in that situation, but our model thinks LSU - at 11-2 but with quality wins over Alabama, Florida and Auburn - would still have a 33 percent chance of making the playoff despite the back-to-back losses, given the other chaotic options we’re providing. Then we have Georgia winning the SEC over LSU. (The committee has been known to put an emphasis on head-to-head resumes.) For chaos’s sake, that makes the Buckeyes a much more ambiguous pick than Minnesota would have been at 12-1, with wins over both Ohio State and Penn State (who beat Michigan earlier this season). That lets the Buckeyes finish the season 12-1, with a conference title but also with a head-to-head loss against 10-2 Michigan. How do we create the most chaos out of that mix?įirst, we have Ohio State winning the Big Ten.

The results above would set up the following Power Five conference championship matchups in Week 15: Baylor vs. There’s a 1 in 147 chance of all of these Week 14 outcomes happening according to FiveThirtyEight’s model.īut we’re not done yet. Predicted playoff probabilities if the following results occurred in Week 14įor teams with a playoff chance of at least 1 percent through week 13. Perfect playoff chaos would start in Rivalry Week … After Week 14, our scenario would give nine different teams at least a 10 percent chance of making the playoff, with only one real lock: Clemson at 94 percent. (We give them a whopping 47 percent playoff chance if that happens.) But a Minnesota win contributes even more to the most doom-laden of all doomsday scenarios.įinally, we need LSU to lose against Texas A&M - which has a 16 percent chance of happening - bringing the Tigers’ record to 11-1 heading into the SEC title game. The same flexibility exists around Minnesota and Wisconsin: The Badgers actually have a 6 percent chance now, despite losing two games, so they could figure into committee chaos if they win out. You can also construct some pretty chaotic situations where Ohio State wins here and then loses the Big Ten title, but our top doomsday scenario sees a Michigan win. Although we currently give the Wolverines only a 2 percent chance of making the playoff, they rank seventh in FPI, and our model gives them a solid-enough 30 percent chance of upsetting the Buckeyes. The other most hotly contested games of Week 14 are both in the Big Ten, with Michigan hosting Ohio State and Minnesota facing Wisconsin.

Since Auburn was essentially eliminated from playoff contention weeks ago, the only result that promotes meaningful chaos is an Alabama win - allowing the Tide to finish the regular season 11-1 and hope for a repeat of 2017, when they made the playoff with one loss despite not even playing for the conference title. Let’s start with Rivalry Week and the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn. Instead, they use our model’s expectation of how those rankings will change. These chances reflect the results from Week 13 but not the latest playoff committee rankings, which were released Tuesday night. And there are a few combinations of results involving the top teams (let’s say, everyone with at least 1 percent chance in our current projections) that could throw the committee into disarray over the next few weeks.

That means we’re looking for situations with as few high- or low-probability teams - and as many with some nonzero chance - as possible.Ĭall it an old habit from the days of the Bowl Championship Series, but rooting for college football chaos is fun. The doomsday scenarios, then, are the ones where - even conditional on a given set of results happening - there is the most uncertainty about who the committee would actually pick for the playoff. How does it work? Our prediction model has two components - it forecasts future games (using a mix of ESPN’s Football Power Index and the committee rankings), and it also predicts how the committee will react to those results. This is the set of results that could potentially give the selection committee the most fits when they sit down to pick the playoff teams in about a week and a half. In what has become a recurring tradition since FiveThirtyEight started predicting the College Football Playoff field, it’s time for another installment of our Playoff Doomsday Scenario.