Over the past few weeks we have covered a lot of ground in this series. We started back in 2024, took a close look at the schedule for the Michigan State Spartans, and then made some predictions about the winners of all nine Football Bowl Subdivision conferences.
Now, it is time to put all of the pieces together and make some predictions about the 12-team college football playoff.
Review of Conference Champion Predictions
Table 1 below summarizes the results shared in the previous parts of this series regarding the two teams from each conference who are predicted to face each other in their respective conference championship games.
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| Table 1: Review of the predicted conference championship game participants based the preseason simulation results and the disruptive scenario. |
The left side of the table presents the predicted conference championship participants based on the raw odds generated from my preseason Monte Carlo simulation of the full season. The middle of the table gives the results from my "disruptive scenario." This scenario starts by assuming that the favored teams win every single game on the full season schedule, but the results are then adjusted to add a historically reasonable number of road upsets.
The right side of the table gives the record of each team in the disruptive scenario as well as some of the notable wins and losses for each team in that scenario. I generally use the results of the disruptive scenario as my official picks.
Table 2 below shows the teams with the best odds as well as my disruptive picks for each conference champion.
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| Table 2: Review of the predicted conference champions based the preseason simulation results and the disruptive scenario. |
Playoff Selection
Based on the current playoff selection criteria, the five highest ranked conference champions would earn automatic bids to the college football playoffs. Based on information in Tables 1 and 2, my disruptive scenario would result in the following automatic selections:
- Penn State (12-1), Loss at Ohio State. Wins over Oregon (twice), Nebraska, and Iowa.
- Miami (12-1), Loss at SMU. Wins over Notre Dame, Florida, Louisville, and SMU
- Baylor (11-2), Losses at SMU and TCU. Wins over Arizona State, Auburn, and Kansas State
- Ole Miss (11-2), Losses at Georgia and at Oklahoma. Wins over LSU, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
- Boise State (12-1), Loss at Notre Dame. Wins over UNLV and South Florida
The remaining seven slots would be filled from the pool of teams that either lost in a conference championship game or did not qualify. In this scenario, the conference championship game losers are:
- Oregon (11-2), Losses to Penn State (twice). Wins over Indiana, USC, and at Iowa.
- SMU (10-3), Losses at Clemson and TCU and versus Miami. Wins over Miami, Baylor, and Louisville.
- BYU (10-3), Loses at Texas Tech and Iowa State and versus Baylor. Wins over TCU, Utah, and Colorado.
- Tennessee (10-3), Losses at Alabama, Florida, versus Ole Miss. Wins over Georgia, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.
The following teams would also likely be in the running for a at-large playoff spots:
- Notre Dame (11-1), Loss at Miami. Wins over Texas A&M, USC, Arkansas, and Boise State.
- Ohio State (10-2), Losses at Michigan and Illinois. Wins over Texas, Penn State, and at Washington.
- Clemson (10-2), Losses at Louisville and South Carolina, Wins over LSU, SMU, and Georgia Tech.
- Nebraska (10-2), Losses at Penn State and Minnesota. Wins over Michigan, USC, and Iowa.
- Alabama (9-3), Losses at Georgia, South Carolina, and Auburn. Wins over LSU, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.
- Texas (9-3), Losses at Ohio State, Florida, and Georgia. Wins over Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Arkansas.
- Georgia (9-3), Losses at Tennessee, Auburn, and Florida. Wins over Alabama, Ole Miss, and Texas.
This year, the NCAA decided to modify the seeding process by eliminating automatic first round byes for the highest ranked conference champions. In addition, the NCAA appears to be emphasizing strength of resume metrics as a tool to select and seed the 12 playoff participants. This makes the creation of the college football bracket very similar to the NCAA basketball tournament.
The details of the NCAA's resume strength metric are not clear. But I have developed my own strength of resume metric with I can use as a guide to select and seed the playoff teams based on the scenario highlighted above. My resume metric calculates the number of wins each team has earned relative to the number of wins an average top 25 reference team would be expected to win if it played the same schedule.
Note that in this scenario, there are nine other power five teams that finished the regular season with a 9-3 record (including Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Arizona State, and Kansas State). However, those nine teams finished significantly below the three 9-3 SEC teams listed above in my strength of resume metric. For this reason, I removed those teams from at-large consideration.
Looking at the list of teams above, the top three seeding teams would most likely be the group of one-loss teams:
- No. 1 Penn State (strength of resume metric = +2.91)
- No. 2 Miami (+2.88)
- No. 3 Notre Dame (+2.38)
In addition, Boise State (+1.01) would almost certainly draw the No. 12 seed. The selection of teams No. 4 to No. 11 is more open ended.
My strength of resume metric suggests that Ole Miss, Baylor, Ohio State, Oregon, and Clemson are a step ahead of the remaining at-large candidates. Based on a combination of record, key wins and loses, and the raw strength of resume data, I would seed those teams as follows:
- No. 4 Ole Miss (+2.01)
- No. 5 Baylor (+2.38)
- No. 6 Ohio State (+1.53)
- No. 7 Oregon (+2.08)
- No. 8 Clemson (+1.48)
It seems likely that the committee would give the final first round bye to SEC Champion Ole Miss. Big 12 Champion Baylor has too high of a strength of resume metric to drop below the No. 5 seed.
Ohio State's wins over Texas and Penn State are enough to justify the Buckeyes to get the No. 6 seed. Oregon and Clemson then slot into the No. 7 and No. 8 seed based on strength of resume. This seeding also has the benefit of minimizing conference foes meeting each other prior to the semifinal round of the tournament.
The remaining three slots will be filled from a pool of teams including SMU, BYU, Tennessee, Nebraska, Georgia, Texas, and Alabama. If we were to strictly apply my strength of resume metric, the top three teams would be Nebraska (+1.08), Alabama (+0.98), and Tennessee (+0.90). However, if this scenario were to come to pass, I believe the most likely final teams selected would be:
- No. 9 Tennessee (+0.90)
- No. 10 Texas (+0.78)
- No. 11 Georgia (+0.60)
These three SEC teams would get the nod due to the perceived strength of the conference. I would select Tennessee and Texas as the regular season co-champions and Georgia due to the Bulldogs quality wins over Alabama, Ole Miss, and Texas.
Playoff Projection
In the scenario where the above seeding is correct, we can project how this hypothetical bracket would play out. I will use the preseason projected power rankings to estimate a point spread for each game, starting with the four first round games:
- No. 12 Boise State at No. 5 Baylor (-7.0)
- No. 11 Georgia at No. 6 Ohio State (-4.9)
- No. 10 Texas at No. 7 Oregon (+0.8)
- No. 9 Tennessee at No. 8 Clemson (-9.6)
The quarterfinals round of the playoffs would then play out in the following manner:
- Rose Bowl: No. 1 Penn State (-3.2) versus No. 8 Clemson
- Orange Bowl: No. 2 Miami (+5.6) versus No. 10 Texas
- Cotton Bowl: No. 3 Notre Dame (+1.9) versus No. 6 Ohio State
- Sugar Bowl: No. 4 Ole Miss (-4.5) vs. No. 5 Baylor
Note that even though the revised seeding principles are in place, my model projects an upset in two of the four quarterfinal games. This speaks to the tension between seeding teams based on performance versus potential.
Texas and Ohio State are ranked No. 1 and No. 3 respectively in the preseason polls. In scenario outlined above, those two teams took tough loses on the road which impacted the overall records and strength of resume. But on a neutral field, these two teams would be favored to beat opponents with a better resume.
The semifinal round would then look like this:
- Peach Bowl: No. 1 Penn State (-8.1) versus No. 4 Ole Miss
- Fiesta Bowl: No. 6 Ohio State (+1.3) versus No. 10 Texas
The finals would then be:
- National Title Game: No. 1 Penn State (+0.7) versus No. 10 Texas
Based on my analysis, I project that the Texas Longhorns will win the National Championship for the 2025-26 season.
While the actual season is quite unlikely to play out as outlined above, this exercise does highlight a few important points. Seeding is an imperfect science, especially when there are only 12 data points (games) per season.
At the end of the day, a 12-team bracket gives highly talented teams which may stumble once or twice (or three times) a chance at redemption. In 2024, No. 8 seed Ohio State defeated No. 7 seed Notre Dame to win the National Title.
My analysis showed that despite these low seeds, the Buckeye and Fighting Irish were the two strongest teams in the country. The expanded tournament gave those teams another chance to prove it on the field. The 2025-26 season will likely demonstrate this principle once again.
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