"Repeat after me: Most teams will lose another game. We're just close enough to the finish line of the regular season that we start to think things are locked into place. Oklahoma is the "first one out" in the College Football Playoff rankings -- the Sooners are in trouble! Texas is 10th -- the Longhorns are in! Five teams have one conference loss atop the ACC and American Conference; therefore, we're guaranteed huge logjams with gross tiebreakers."
"Maybe. But most teams will lose another game. There's about a 1-in-3 chance that we end up with even a three-way tie of 7-1 teams atop the American, 1-in-5 in the ACC. Of the teams right on the borderline of the playoff -- say, the ones ranked eighth through 14th -- only one has greater than a 54% chance of winning out between now and Championship Weekend, and there's only about a 0.1% chance they all do."
Most teams will lose another game before the regular season ends, keeping playoff and conference races unsettled. The probability of a three-way tie of 7-1 teams atop the American is about one in three, and about one in five in the ACC. Only one team ranked eighth through 14th has better than a 54% chance of winning out to Championship Weekend, and the chance that all of them win out is about 0.1%. Week 12 features critical matchups, including SEC road tests for two high-profile programs and pivotal conference games in Pittsburgh, New Orleans and Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Read at ESPN.com
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