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Ironically, the No. 4 seed has the best chance to win it all, according to Nate Silver and ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight.
While Alabama (68 percent) has a slightly better chance of making the final than Oklahoma (66 percent), the Sooners enter the playoff as the favorite with a 41 percent chance of winning the title.
That’s due to the fact that Oklahoma owns the highest FPI rating of any FBS school in the country. FPI, or ESPN’s Football Power Index, is the metric it uses for calculating win probabilities. The Sooners are matched up Clemson, the 3rd-best team in terms of FPI.
Meanwhile, the model also projects Michigan State with the worst chance of both making the final (32 percent) and winning the national title (10 percent). According to FiveThirtyEight, the Spartans got a bad draw as they would’ve had a 42 percent chance to make the final if they were the ones seeded No. 4 instead of Oklahoma.
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.
