Surviving conference championship weekend is the only thing that stands between the top teams and the College Football Playoff with the top-4 teams being announced Sunday, December 4.
For The Win’s college football series, Before The Snap, broke down the paths to the playoff for the top-6 teams in the latest rankings, and it’s actually pretty simple. If the current top-4 teams all win their respective conference championship games, they should all be in — though Georgia and Michigan are basically playoff locks regardless.
However, the latest playoff rankings don’t quite line up with the teams with the best playoff chances, per ESPN’s Playoff Predictor algorithm. So it may come as a surprise to a lot of fans that, according to the formula, Ohio State — despite a bad loss to Michigan in Week 13 and not playing for a Big Ten title — currently has a better shot at making the playoff than USC, which faces off against Utah for the Pac-12 championship.
Perhaps we can shed a little light on why that may be.
So going into Week 14’s conference championship games, here’s a look at the top teams with the best chances to make the College Football Playoff, along with their chances of advancing to the title game and winning it all, according to ESPN’s Playoff Predictor, as of Wednesday. The Playoff Predictor utilizes an algorithm that factors in the same considerations as the selection committee, such as strength of record, number of losses and conference championships (or independent status), along with the FPI.