Weekly Playoff Probabilities - Week 13

As always, explanation here, ranking below, thoughts after.

Rank	Team	Agg Rank	POFF Prob	Change
1	Alabama	1	99.74%	0.5%
2	Ohio State	3	96.80%	15.3%
3	Clemson	4	88.95%	-3.7%
4	Washington	5	48.07%	21.0%
5	Michigan	2	22.60%	-29.1%
6	Western Michigan	22	16.51%	4.1%
7	Wisconsin	12	8.24%	1.8%
8	Penn State	14	6.49%	-0.6%
9	Colorado	13	6.45%	-2.3%
10	Oklahoma	8	4.85%	-3.0%
11	West Virginia	19	0.76%	0.0%
12	Oklahoma State	17	0.54%	-0.5%

1.  So, The Game came and went and as expected, the results shook things up.  You may notice that a few of the two-loss teams dropped a bit at the same time, but the cause was something else: Washington clearing a major hurdle.  The Huskies' blowout win in the Apple Cup served to keep them in the one-loss bucket and boosted their schedule a bit by adding the one good Pac-12 team they hadn't played (Colorado).  We now have roughly even odds of having a straight-forward playoff with three conference champs with one or fewer losses, and one really strong 11-1 non-champ. 

2.  That said, if we do get a little chaos, it would appear from the chart above that Michigan has the best odds of making the playoffs.  While that may be true (their SOS is slightly ahead of everyone else in the two-loss bucket), the main reason for the gulf is that they have finished their season, and everyone else has to play a tough game.  Once the results shake out, the victors of championship week should pull much closer to the Wolverines.

3.  Fun week for eliminations with one obvious (Florida), one not-too-surprising (Nebraska), and one WTF (Louisville).  In case you were wondering, Louisville is still 7th in the aggregate ratings because of how awesome they were the first two months of the season.  But they reeeeeally aren't making the playoff now, nor do they deserve to (in any definition of the word).


Week 14 Preview

Home	Away	Home Win Prob	Playoff Teams Lost
Colorado	Washington	30.9%	0.119
Clemson	Virginia Tech	81.7%	0.081
Penn State	Wisconsin	46.1%	0.035
Alabama	Florida	91.0%	0.030
Oklahoma	Oklahoma State	73.8%	0.017
Ohio	Western Michigan	9.1%	0.005
West Virginia	Baylor	77.6%	0.002

As one would expect, we have a decent slate for championship week.  That said, it's not as exciting as last year's edition (which had the two biggest games of the year), nor is it as big as last week (which had OSU-Michigan).  The "playoff importance" of the season peaked last week for a couple of reasons.  One, Ohio State and Michigan were in much stronger positions than the two-loss glut, so they each had further to fall.  Two, while it's decently likely a two-loss team makes the playoff, there's so many of them that it divides up the odds such that none of them can be involved in that "important" of a game.  And finally, there isn't a true win-and-in game out there.  The Pac-12 title game comes the closest, but I still think Colorado is more likely than not to miss the playoffs if they win.  Penn State-Wisconsin also exists in this vein, but I wouldn't be shocked if Michigan remains above them due to the head-to-head wins and a non-conference victory over a potential conference champ (Colorado).  We shall see.