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CFP Simulation (After Quarterfinals)
The Semifinals of the College Football Playoff are now set. Indiana will face Oregon in an all-Big Ten rematch and Ole Miss will face Miami. Indiana is the new favorite to win its first national title.
CFP Simulation (After First Round)
The First Round of the College Football Playoff is complete and Alabama, Miami, Ole Miss, and Oregon have all survived and advanced to the Quarterfinals. We’ve updated our simulation model after the First Round results.
CFP Simulation (Before First Round)
As we did last year, we simulated the CFP using Monte Carlo simulation with win probabilities for each potential match-up derived from the Massey Ratings (https://masseyratings.com/). Massey’s ratings have looked favorably on Ohio State all season and this translates to the Buckeyes having the highest probability to win the National Championship. We’ll update these projections as the playoff unfolds.
Hypothetical Brackets
For our first article we take a look at hypotheticsl CFP brackets for 2025. Let’s take a look at how the BCS (2 teams), four team CFP, and hypothetical 16 and 24 teams playoffs would look. We use the CPF rankings to seed the teams. For the 24 team bracket, we use the PEAR Ratings (https://pearatings.com/cfb/fbs) to seed the conference champions that are outside of the CFP Top 25.
BCS: 2 Teams
The Bowl Championship Series matched the top two ranked teams using a rating system comprised of comptuer and human polls. No auto-bids. The BCS was used from 1998 through 2013 and was not without its detractors and controversies. No Group of Five team was ever realistically close to inclusion in the BCS championship game. For 2025, the BCS would yield a re-match of Indiana and Ohio State.
Original CFP: 4 Teams
The CFP with four teams (no auto bids) began in 2014 and ended in 2023. Only one Group of Five team (Cincinnati in 2021) every made the playoff in this format.
Modified CFP: 16 Teams
For this hypothetical bracket, we’ll assume that the automatics bids from the current CFP format (top five conference champions) remain the same. We just add four more at-large teams.
Modified CFP: 24 Teams
This hypothetical format is modeled after the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) playoff format. Each conference receives an automatic bid for their champion. The remaining teams are at-large. It seems likely that conference championship games would go away in this format.
