Weekly Playoff Probabilities - Week 13

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

Rank	Team	Agg Rank	POFF Prob	Change
1	Notre Dame	7	100.0%	11.1%
2	Clemson	2	99.1%	1.2%
3	Alabama	1	89.2%	3.6%
4	Georgia	3	44.2%	5.1%
5	Oklahoma	5	35.8%	12.4%
6	Ohio State	6	21.0%	13.3%
7	Michigan	4	7.6%	-38.6%
8	Washington State	19	1.7%	-4.0%
9	Central Florida	17	1.4%	-0.1%

1.  There's going to be some sound bytes over the coming week about Notre Dame getting left out of the Playoff should the other top teams do well next Saturday.  And while I will grant that it's possible that could happen, I still think it is incredibly unlikely.  So I'll leave my model as it is, and not just because I like the way it looks.

2.  LSU was eliminated by 74 points scored in 7 overtimes, while West Virginia was eliminated by 59 points scored in the normal amount of time.  UCF is the only team left that can be removed from this list, so what you see now is pretty much it.

3.  This still doesn't look that much different.  I still think it's pretty unlikely that the SEC places two teams in the Playoff, but a close title game would mean that either Georgia (.614 SOS - very high) or Alabama (the committee loves them) would have a strong case even with a loss.  So we're not out of the woods yet.

Conference	Exp Playoff Teams
SEC	1.334
IND	1.000
ACC	0.991
B12	0.358
B10	0.286
P12	0.017
AMER	0.014

4.  One interesting thing (to me, at least) is comparing my model to others.  Specifically, the results of my model almost exactly lines up with ESPN's, but is a little different than 538's.  The main reason for this is that the 538 model treats conference titles as more important than they probably are, which is why they have ND significantly lower than the others.  Other than that, everything is relatively straightforward, so we're all pretty much in agreements as to what will happen.


Week 14 Preview

Home	Away	Home Win Prob	Playoff Teams Lost
Alabama	Georgia	66.8%	0.246
Oklahoma	Texas	76.0%	0.043
Clemson	Pitt	95.4%	0.015
Ohio State	Northwestern	86.3%	0.014
Central Florida	Memphis	75.7%	0.003

Championship week gives us one of the best title game matchups in recent memory and a bunch of junk.  The less impactful games like Boise-Fresno, UAB-MTSU, and Marshall-VT are interesting enough to give the week a little depth.  But mostly you should just soak up what little football remains and be thankful for that.