NCAA football playoff forecasts, week 11

With the end of the season near, there are few teams that have a chance to make the playoffs. Both models agree that Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Notre Dame and maybe Oklahoma are the clear favorites. Others have a chance, but not a big chance. The two forecasting models we use work in the same way in terms of how they account for strength of schedule. They only differ in how much weight they assign to a win (an “effective” win) based on the location of the game and the score differential. As a result, we generally see that they come to the same conclusions. However, there are some big differences. The most noticeable is Oklahoma, who is the fourth most likely team to make the playoff in mLRMC and eighth in ln(mLRMC). This is a huge difference. We also see that ln(mLRMC) is more enthusiastic about Iowa than anyone else who follows college football. ———- mLRMC Method: Top Teams to make the 4-team playoff ———— 1 Clemson 2 Alabama 3 Ohio State 4 Oklahoma 5 Notre Dame 6 Oklahoma State 7 Iowa 8 Florida 9 Stanford 10 Michigan State 11 Michigan 12 North Carolina ———- ln(mLRMC) Method: Top Teams to make the 4-team playoff ———— 1 Alabama 2 Clemson 3 Notre Dame 4 Ohio State 5 Iowa 6 Michigan State 7 Florida 8 Oklahoma 9 North Carolina 10 Oklahoma State 11 Michigan 12 Stanford