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Projection has 5 teams left that control their destinies to reach playoff
Published:
Only a handful of teams are all but guaranteed to make the College Football Playoff if they take care of business the rest of the the way.
At least that’s the projection made by FiveThirtyEight, an analytics-based sports and politics site owned by ESPN, which has been calculating the probability of teams to make the playoff this season.
Editor Andrew Flowers has 13 teams with a chance to make the playoff, with that cutoff point being Michigan in the graphic below. However, only five of those 13 — Alabama, Clemson, Iowa, Michigan State and Oklahoma — are virtually assured of a spot in the top four if they win out.
Alabama, Clemson, Iowa and Oklahoma would have more than a 99 percent chance while Michigan State would have a 98 percent shot.
According to his math, that bodes well for the Sooners, who comfortably have the highest likelihood of winning out among his field of 13 (62 percent). The teams with the next-best chances as far as that goes are Alabama and Ohio State, tied at 51 percent.
https://twitter.com/andrewflowers/status/669529527744389120
Born and raised in Gainesville, Talal joined SDS in 2015 after spending 2 years in Bristol as an ESPN researcher. Previously, Talal worked at The Gainesville Sun.
