They’re updated right here.

Let’s hit the highlights.

• First, yeah, there’s still 5 SEC teams. Unfortunately, the relatively chalky rivalry weekend didn’t shake things up too much. The one upset that did happen, Texas over Texas A&M, likely cost the Aggies a first round bye, as their ticket to a bye with their schedule was to suffer their only loss in the SEC Championship Game.
• Speaking of the SEC Championship Game, the SEC team now likely on the shakiest ground is Alabama. I personally believe that a loss to Georgia (a team they beat in the regular season) probably won’t get them knocked out… unless BYU upsets Texas Tech, which would get a second Big 12 team into the field. And if Bama beats Georgia again? Well, that sounds like a problem for next weekend.
• Oh, yeah, the ACC thing. I… honestly have no idea what will happen if Duke upsets Virginia Saturday. The main that needs to happen immediately is for the ACC and other conferences to fix their tiebreakers to prevent a 5-loss team from getting into the conference title game. The next thing is that the conferences are simply too large. One of the main issues with the tiebreakers as-is is the lack of connectivity between many teams. The ACC is the most obvious case this season, but the SEC, American, and Mountain West also had issues. The SEC actually got to the same tiebreaker as the ACC, it’s just less egregious (because they’re picking between 1-loss teams), but there’s definitely an argument to be made that Alabama probably shouldn’t be there.
• Speaking of the Tide, remember when they lost to Florida State? Y’all, we play a 12 game season, and all the games have to count. I’m not sure this will actually come up, but it probably should, especially if Georgia thoroughly handles the Tide in Atlanta.
• Speaking of SEC teams that lost games to bad Florida teams, Texas is not making the playoff. They are behind, in no particular order: 3-loss Bama, 2-loss BYU, Miami, and Vanderbilt. It’s not happening.
• Outside of the playoff, we have enough teams! Well, sort of: we’re technically two short, but fortunately both of the FCS to FBS transition teams in Conference USA (Missouri State and Delaware) are 6-6 or better.

From this point forward, the predictions page is a bit of a living document: I won’t necessarily create a new post when it updates, but I will update if I hear any particular news about bowl destinations. Some wild cards include: there not being enough SEC teams, which American teams that just lost their coaches will still get called up to better bowls, where the service academies (which still play another game next week) will go, and where UConn will go. In addition, I have two extra “Pac-12” in Cal and Washington State, and I’m not entirely sure what will happen to them. Again, the page will update if I find anything out.

A lo, the upsets have happened, so I was only three teams short. Here’s the latest.

It sure looks like we’re going to see five SEC teams in the playoff. What no one really seems to be talking about is the knock-on effect on the SEC’s bowl tie-ins. Obviously, I don’t think the conference itself is too worried about this, but the folks in Nashville, Charlotte, and Memphis might be. There’s multiple tiers of SEC games, roughly summarized as:

1. the Citrus Bowl
2. the Texas, Gator, Music City, Reliaquest, Mayo, and Liberty Bowls
3. the Gasparilla and Birmingham Bowls

I have Texas A&M, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma making the playoff. The only other bowl eligible SEC teams I project to have are Texas, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, LSU, and Mizzou. So that’s only four teams for the group of 6. My suspicion is that the American’s group of top teams is going to to benefit from this. (Especially Memphis.) And of course, there’s still a chance in the rivalry games this weekend: Kentucky, Auburn, and Miss State can get to 6-6 with wins over their rivals. Stay tuned.

I don’t have a lot to note here except I that I really hope the “5 SEC teams in the playoff” thing doesn’t come to pass. Based on my projections, I have Texas A&M playing Alabama in the SEC title game. I’d have to think that the only thing that would knock Bama out in that scenario is just getting completely walloped by the Aggies.

So… let’s hope for something weird next weekend in Jordan-Hare Stadium?

The bowl predictions page has been updated.

Once again, we’re six teams short, so I had to use both the transitioning schools (Delaware and Missouri State) and four 5-7 teams (in order: Northwestern, Auburn, Rice, and Central Florida). Once again, since I predict the games out using SP+, there is a potential that any team I have projected to finish 5-7 finds one more upset and qualifies normally. For example, Mississippi State is projected to lose out to Missouri and Mississippi, but they’re about a 10 point underdog to Mizzou, which is well within the realm of possibility. (And the Egg Bowl is, of course, the Egg Bowl.)

We’ll get more clarity when the newest CFP rankings are released tomorrow. The main question is if they will put in a three loss Alabama: I have the Tide losing to Oklahoma and Texas A&M in the SEC Championship Game. At some point, that loss to Florida State has to come home to roost, right? For now I have Utah as the last at-large bid to the playoff.

The other point of contention is going to be the status of the ACC champion. As the joke goes, when the ACC killed divisions (and therefore the notoriously volatile Coastal division), they just made everything Coastal. If everything goes to my projections, the Virginia will finish with one conference loss and Louisville would win the tiebreakers between the two-loss ACC teams (which in addition to the Cards I have as Miami, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, Southern Methodist, and Duke). This prevent the nightmare scenario of a 7-5 Duke making it to, and winning, the ACC Championship Game, in which case the ACC would probably miss the playoff entirely.

I’ve been doing bowl predictions since 1999. While there’s a lot more bowl games now (oh, and a playoff!), I still do my best to predict who goes where.

There’s essentially two phases to this. This phase is trying to figure out who goes where. At this point in the season, I am projecting each team’s record using SP+. Since most teams have 3 to 4 regular season games left, there’s a lot of wiggle room. In particular, doing it this way means that early on I’m usually short a few teams. As upsets happen and SP+ gets more in-season data, things usually even out. Right now, I need 76 teams, and I’m five short. This means I had to include FCS to FBS transition teams Delaware and Missouri State, and a well as 3 5-7 teams based on their APR.

Starting in 1999, and up until now, I had used Microsoft Expression Web (neé FrontPage). However, the software is several years old and it doesn’t run well anymore. I had also wanted some various modern web niceties (like displaying correctly on phones). So suffice it to say, the predictions have a different look this year. I’ll be continuing to tweak it, or if I can’t get it to work the way I want, I’ll just revert to the old system. For now though, enjoy.