It’s that time again, and you’ll find the latest predictions here.

Notes and tidbits:

• This week I needed 5 5-7 teams, down from 7 last week. The trajectory is good, but we’ll need some big upsets to get all the way there.
• The Sun Belt has 9 teams qualified, and they’re certainly doing their part to plug a lot of gaps left by the decimated Conference USA.
• Speaking of the Sun Belt, while James Madison lost their NCAA petition, barring a lot of upsets, they’ll still get a bowl game at least. As a reminder, they would get in before any 5-7 team.
• Once again, unlike JMU, I don’t think Jacksonville State can get in this year since this is the first year of their FCS to FBS transition.
• Since Army and Navy aren’t already qualified, I don’t see them making it since the bowls are announced a week before they play. In addition, Army is 5-6 and played two FCS teams. Navy plays SMU this weekend and if they win, they’ll get in, but I see that as… unlikely.
• For the playoff picture, I realized that the Committee will likely rank the undefeated teams ahead of any 1-loss team, so Oregon slides down to the 4th spot.
• And finally, I needed no shenanigans to get Georgia Tech in, which is something I haven’t been able to safely do since 2018. That said, I really suspect we’re going to get the Sun Bowl or some such.

Playoff tiers:

• First tier: Georgia (undefeated SEC champ), undefeated Big Ten champ (Michigan or Ohio State), Florida State (undefeated ACC champ), undefeated/one-loss Pac-12 champ (Washington or Oregon)
• Second tier: Texas (1-loss Big 12 champ)
• Third tier: 1-loss Big Ten non-champ (Michigan or Ohio State)
• Fourth tier: 1-loss SEC champ (Alabama or (if only) Georgia), Washington (1-loss Pac-12 runner-up)
• In other words: if Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, Florida State, Washington, or Oregon win out, they’re in. I’m aware of the Jordan Travis injury for FSU but if they’re undefeated they’re in.
• Texas, if they win out, is probably ahead of any 1-loss team that isn’t Oregon, though I could see Washington staying above them.
• We’d need a lot of weird upsets in the next two weeks to even really start talking about Louisville getting in. This is pretty much the whole field as I see it.

They’re here!

This week I was only 7 teams short thanks to some upsets, but regardless we’re going to need to a lot more to get to the number we need.

As promised, here’s some insight into my thought process:

• I always start with the CFP and the New Year’s Six bowl games. I expect Michigan, Georgia, Oregon, Florida State, and Texas to win out. This means someone will be left out. It may be ideal for Texas to get Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game to see if they can avenge their Red River loss, otherwise I think Oregon will have an edge over them.
• The Group of Five New Year’s Six team is much less certain this year. Tulane may have the insight track to make it two in a row after Air Force has collapsed the past two weeks.
• Thanks to the timing of their losses, Missouri has likely jumped Ole Miss for the third New Year’s Six spot from the SEC.
• The ESPN Events bowl situation remains a mess for folks like me, an issue that makes trying to predict basically all of the pre-Christmas bowl games very difficult.
• While James Madison will likely get into a bowl game regardless of what happens with their waiver. That said, the waiver may affect what game they go to, since nominally every spot is supposed to be filled before the backup pool of teams is used. This may or may not matter since every Sun Belt bowl game is owned by ESPN Events.

They’re actually here this time, and fully filled out even!

Let’s talk a little about the process. What I do is examine each team’s remaining schedule and roughly source based on their projected final record. In the past, I used to just sort of wing it, but these days I use SP+ to determine the winners and losers. SP+ is very predictive, but that does mean I don’t really account for upsets until they happen. So it’s common that I’ll be short a bunch of teams, but the gaps are filled in a bit as upsets occur.

This week I was nine teams short which means that NCAA Division I Bylaw 18.7.2 applies. Here’s a summary of how eligible (or “deserving” in NCAA-speak) teams are determined:

1. You finish with a .500 record or better in games against FBS teams and no more than 1 FCS team (that gives enough scholarships).
2. You would’ve finished with a .500 record or better, but you lost the conference title game (aka the “UCLA and Georgia Tech” rule).

So that got me to 72 bowl eligible teams. The problem is that there are 40 bowl games, so I need 80. What’s a guy to do? Well, turns out the NCAA thought of that. Here’s the deal:

1. You can count 1 FCS win, even if that FCS school didn’t give out enough scholarships.
2. If you played 13 games and finished with a 6-7 record.
3. You’re a team that’s in its final year of reclassifying from FCS to FBS. Currently only James Madison fits this criteria.
4. From then on, we go by Academic Progress Rate, or APR.

What APR is (or isn’t) doesn’t matter much for our purposes. What matters is that we can essentially use to find more teams.

It took some doing, but I got there. Again, check out the page for all the games. I’ll discuss the process more next week as well.

Hey folks, the bowl projections are finally here! I’m short 10 teams! I don’t have time to write anything else! More next week!

They’ve been up at the usual place for a few days, but I haven’t had a chance to write anything until now.

The main thing I did for these update the CFP/NY6 to reflect the rivalry week results. If everything goes chalk this weekend, I suspect the CFP part of the equation won’t change much. However, there’s a a couple variables at work, and they both involve the Rose Bowl:

1. How the Committee treats Utah if they lose to USC tomorrow. Currently Utah is one spot ahead of Washington. If the Committee drops Utah below Washington after what would be their 4th loss, 10-2 Washington will get the Rose Bowl nod. I’m currently predicting this will happen.
2. I didn’t realize this, but according to the Rose Bowl’s own website they do have some prerogatives if they have a repeat team. In this case, it’d be Ohio State, who went to the Rose Bowl last season and in 2018.

If the Rose decides they don’t want Ohio State again, then Ohio State would then go to the Orange Bowl. Penn State would head to Pasadena, and Tennessee would go to the Cotton Bowl. This then triggers other downstream changes, as the ReliaQuest (formerly Outback) Bowl would then have to pick an ACC team. If I had to guess, that would most likely be ACC championship game loser, NC State, or Notre Dame.

We also found out earlier today that New Mexico State got a waiver from the NCAA to be bowl eligible. I am not sure of the details, but I believe they would still need to get to 6-6. They have scheduled Valpraiso this weekend, so I suspect it has to do with being able to count 2 FCS teams. I don’t believe Army has done this yet.

Otherwise, I’ll be keeping an eye on how things shake out this weekend and will try to have my final predictions up on Saturday night or Sunday morning before the playoff and other bowls are announced. Stay tuned!