Weekly Playoff Probabilities - Week 9

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

Rank	Team	Agg Rank	POFF Prob	Change
1	Alabama	1	69.22%	-16.5%
2	Georgia	4	63.81%	13.8%
3	Penn State	3	52.92%	-7.4%
4	Ohio State	2	46.07%	16.7%
5	Notre Dame	5	43.88%	13.5%
6	Clemson	6	35.38%	9.9%
7	Central Florida	15	28.61%	1.9%
8	Wisconsin	11	21.40%	-3.0%
9	Miami (FL)	17	19.61%	-9.2%
10	Washington	7	7.23%	-3.8%
11	Oklahoma	9	3.49%	0.7%
12	TCU	12	3.09%	-14.5%
13	Oklahoma State	10	1.67%	-0.1%
14	Virginia Tech	13	1.66%	0.5%
15	USC	18	0.64%	0.3%
16	Mississippi State	14	0.51%	0.3%
17	Auburn	8	0.34%	-0.1%
18	North Carolina State	20	0.18%	-1.6%
19	Stanford	16	0.11%	-0.2%
20	Michigan	22	0.08%	0.0%
21	Iowa State	21	0.03%	0.0%
22	Washington State	25	0.02%	-0.7%
23	Michigan State	32	0.02%	-0.6%
24	South Carolina	38	0.01%	0.0%
25	LSU	24	0.01%	0.0%
26	Arizona	26	0.00%	0.0%
27	Kentucky	68	0.00%	0.0%

1.  So, a couple of weird things happened.  First, our biggest dropper of the week was...idle Alabama?  Aside from having the most to lose, there are some pretty logical reasons why Alabama moved down so much.  First, their wins in the bank don't look quite as good as they did: All three of their non-conference opponents lost (Florida State, Fresno State, and Colorado State), while their two cross-divisional opponents lost (Tennessee and Vandy).  This helped to move their predicted SOS from .594 (elite) to .568 (merely pretty good).  An 11-1 or 12-1 Alabama was previously viewed as a near-lock for the Playoff, but now there's a little less room for error.  Additionally, their odds of winning out dropped from 44% to 35%, partially because future opponents Mississippi State and Georgia looked quite good this week.  The Tide is still in better shape than anyone, but they'll probably have to sweat the last five weeks out more than we previously thought.

2.  The other noticeable oddity is Penn State barely dropping after their loss to the Buckeyes.  Much the Bama weirdness, it's pretty easy to justify this.  First of all, Penn State's odds of finishing 11-1 or better barely decreased.  Last week this figure was 81% and now it's all the way down to 73%.  The main reason for this is that they are now very unlikely to have to play Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game.  This means their toughest remaining test is a road game against Michigan State in which they will be favored by double digits.  Second, Penn State's non-conference opponents (Akron and Pitt) and cross-division opponents (Nebraska, Northwestern, and Iowa) went 5-0 this week, meaning that losing the opportunity to play the Badgers doesn't really hurt their SOS enough to matter.  An 11-1 Penn State will have an eerily similar case to last year's 11-1 Ohio State - so much so that they're probably getting it.  Never let it be said that the college football gods don't have a sense of humor.

3.  Week 9 eliminated five teams from the rankings: Texas A&M, Virginia, West Virginia, South Florida, and Georgia Tech.  We have still lost only one of the pre-season top 16 (#3 Florida State), which should make the final five weeks pretty damn exciting.

4.  The Pac 12 and Big 12 are basically done (from a playoff standpoint), so it appears that either the Big Ten or SEC is going to get two teams in, or ND is going to make the playoff.  Or maybe both those things happen. 

Conference	Exp Playoff Teams
SEC	1.339
B10	1.205
ACC	0.568
IND	0.439
AMER	0.286
B12	0.083
P12	0.080

5.  Conference title races didn't change too much with the events of Week 9.  Ohio State is now your clear favorite in the East and the Big 12 is up for grabs, but everything else is pretty much as it was.  Northwestern holds on to its faint conference title bid, but they would have to win out while Wisconsin would have to go 1-3 at best.  You can always dream, I guess.

Conference	Favorite	Perc		Runner-Up	Perc
ACCA	Clemson	70.6%		North Carolina State	29.3%
ACCC	Miami (FL)	69.4%		Virginia Tech	29.8%
AMEE	Central Florida	81.5%		South Florida	18.5%
AMEW	Memphis	81.0%		SMU	11.3%
B10E	Ohio State	96.7%		Penn State	2.5%
B10W	Wisconsin	99.4%		Northwestern	0.5%
B12	Oklahoma State	56.9%		Oklahoma	56.7%
CUSAE	Florida Atlantic	79.4%		Marshall	16.4%
CUSAW	North Texas	75.7%		Louisiana Tech	8.5%
MACE	Ohio	53.3%		Akron	36.1%
MACW	Toledo	63.4%		Northern Illinois	26.2%
MWCW	Fresno State	77.9%		San Diego State	21.5%
MWCM	Boise State	63.0%		Colorado State	29.0%
P12N	Washington	62.0%		Stanford	33.8%
P12S	USC	73.9%		Arizona	23.8%
SECE	Georgia	97.1%		South Carolina	2.3%
SECW	Alabama	82.3%		Auburn	12.9%
SUN	Appalachian State	48.1%		Arkansas State	41.7%

Week 10 Preview

Home	Away	Home Win Prob	Playoff Teams Lost
SMU	Central Florida	21.6%	0.062
North Carolina State	Clemson	27.2%	0.049
Michigan State	Penn State	15.0%	0.040
Miami (FL)	Virginia Tech	48.4%	0.038
Iowa	Ohio State	11.8%	0.027
Notre Dame	Wake Forest	88.4%	0.025
Georgia	South Carolina	91.9%	0.017
Alabama	LSU	93.0%	0.016
Oklahoma State	Oklahoma	55.4%	0.013
Indiana	Wisconsin	18.2%	0.013

There is no game with anything close to the importance of Ohio State-Penn State this weekend (just look at the #1 game...lol).  That said, this is probably the deepest week I have ever seen since starting this exercise two years ago.  Every game in the top ten has a reasonably important impact on the playoff and a few of the games just off the top ten (Auburn-A&M, Wazzu-Stanford, Arizona-USC) promise to be great.  If you're going to spend a full Saturday in front of the TV, this is probably it.

Weekly Playoff Probabilities - Week 8

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

Rank	Team	Agg Rank	POFF Prob	Change
1	Alabama	1	85.76%	-3.2%
2	Penn State	3	60.35%	8.7%
3	Georgia	6	49.97%	-1.4%
4	Notre Dame	4	30.36%	12.7%
5	Ohio State	2	29.38%	-9.7%
6	Miami (FL)	15	28.82%	-10.1%
7	Central Florida	16	26.67%	12.1%
8	Clemson	5	25.43%	1.9%
9	Wisconsin	9	24.44%	-2.9%
10	TCU	12	17.59%	-0.3%
11	Washington	7	11.01%	1.2%
12	Oklahoma	10	2.74%	-1.4%
13	North Carolina State	18	1.75%	-0.2%
14	Oklahoma State	11	1.74%	-0.1%
15	Virginia Tech	14	1.15%	0.7%
16	Washington State	23	0.72%	0.0%
17	Michigan State	30	0.60%	-0.1%
18	Auburn	8	0.41%	-0.1%
19	USC	20	0.35%	-5.9%
20	Stanford	13	0.34%	-0.6%
21	Mississippi State	17	0.19%	0.0%
22	Michigan	22	0.09%	-0.7%
23	Texas A&M	37	0.04%	-0.1%
24	Georgia Tech	21	0.04%	0.0%
25	LSU	25	0.02%	0.0%
26	South Carolina	39	0.01%	0.0%
27	South Florida	28	0.01%	0.0%
28	Iowa State	26	0.01%	0.0%
29	Kentucky	73	0.00%	0.0%
30	Arizona	35	0.00%	0.0%
31	West Virginia	33	0.00%	0.0%
32	Virginia	71	0.00%	0.0%

1. The "pretender" one-loss teams (Kentucky and Virginia) lost this past weekend, which leaves us with all of the legitimate contenders occupying the top 17 slots.  The most notable jumps belong to Penn State and Notre Dame, which makes sense as 1) they won the two biggest games of the day in dominant fashion, and 2) they're both really good.

2.  Since it was a pretty quiet week, a quick note about the differences between my model and 538's.  For the most part our results line up pretty well, but there are a few exceptions.  Most notably, the SEC teams, the Big Ten teams, and Notre Dame are all a bit lower in their implementation.  The reason for this is that their model weights conference titles fairly heavily whereas mine does not even consider them as a separate variable.  This means my model sees a number of possibilities where Georgia and Alabama (or Penn State and Ohio State if you prefer) both make the top four, while 538's model thinks there needs to be a fair amount of chaos for that to happen.  Furthermore, if you click the "win out" box next to Notre Dame, you'll see that their model only gives an 11-1 Irish team a coin flip's chance of making the playoff.  Mine thinks an 11-1 Notre Dame is basically a lock with a 92% chance in that scenario.  I generally respect the work that 538 does, but I think a 40 percentage point difference based on a single variable* is a bit strange.

*And remember, this is a variable with zero evidence of its own importance.  Just last year, we saw non-conference champ Ohio State beat out Penn State, and every other playoff participant has effectively qualified on their own merits.

3.  A brisk week for eliminations leaves us with Wake Forest, Iowa, Utah, and Texas Tech on the outside looking in.  As a reminder that my model is actually good, the Utes were at just 0.05% to make the playoff when they were 4-0 three weeks ago.

4.  Same story, different week for the conference-level playoff odds.  Ohio State's loss to the Sooners and Wisconsin's bad SOS makes it more difficult to envision a second Big Ten team in the playoff when compared to the Bama-Georgia pairing.  But if Penn State finishes a strong 11-1, I can see them pulling off a 2016 Ohio State and squeezing themselves in.

Conference	Exp Playoff Teams
SEC	1.364
B10	1.149
ACC	0.572
IND	0.304
AMER	0.267
B12	0.221
P12	0.124

5.  Two weeks ago, San Diego State had an 89% chance to win their division.  Now, Fresno State has the second best odds of any team in any division.  Part of this wild swing is due to the rest of the division being terrible, but part of it is due to the Bulldogs legitimate rise in quality in Jeff Tedford's first season.  In other news, every division now has a clear favorite thank in large part to Memphis and FAU turning into near-dominant squads.

Conference	Favorite	Perc		Runner-Up	Perc
ACCA	Clemson	57.3%		North Carolina State	42.4%
ACCC	Miami (FL)	77.3%		Virginia Tech	20.7%
AMEE	Central Florida	75.2%		South Florida	24.9%
AMEW	Memphis	73.6%		SMU	14.3%
B10E	Ohio State	64.9%		Penn State	33.3%
B10W	Wisconsin	99.7%		Northwestern	0.2%
B12	TCU	77.7%		Oklahoma State	52.2%
CUSAE	Florida Atlantic	56.2%		Marshall	38.4%
CUSAW	North Texas	57.1%		Southern Miss	36.2%
MACE	Ohio	58.6%		Akron	24.4%
MACW	Toledo	60.0%		Northern Illinois	27.1%
MWCW	Fresno State	98.6%		San Diego State	1.4%
MWCM	Colorado State	60.2%		Boise State	36.3%
P12N	Washington	52.8%		Stanford	38.5%
P12S	USC	58.0%		Arizona State	23.6%
SECE	Georgia	93.7%		South Carolina	3.1%
SECW	Alabama	84.6%		Auburn	11.5%
SUN	Appalachian State	60.9%		Arkansas State	28.3%

Week 9 Preview

Home	Away	Home Win Prob	Playoff Teams Lost
Ohio State	Penn State	67.3%	0.183
Notre Dame	North Carolina State	79.9%	0.038
Clemson	Georgia Tech	82.2%	0.023
Georgia	Florida	86.8%	0.022
Iowa State	TCU	31.9%	0.019
North Carolina	Miami (FL)	10.6%	0.010
Washington	UCLA	89.1%	0.006
Illinois	Wisconsin	3.1%	0.002
Oklahoma	Texas Tech	85.2%	0.002
West Virginia	Oklahoma State	23.3%	0.002

Now it starts.  Four of the next five weeks are the four biggest weeks of the year, per the "Playoff Teams Lost" metric.  Week 9 is a more top-heavy than some (which happens when the #2 team has a 2 in 3 chance of losing), but there's enough depth to keep me interested all day.  My favorite clash is ND's amazing O-line versus Bradley Chubb and the Wolfpack's ferocious D-line.  Just off the top ten list is a lovely late-night tussle between Arizona and Washington State.  There's also the game that could decide the Pac 12 South, with USC traveling to Arizona State.