Week 12 Preview and Rankings Forecasts
What happens if Tennessee beats Georgia? Is CU able to make up ground this weekend against a weakened Utah squad?
The new rankings are all set and Week 12 is among us. Seems like a lull of a week outside of one or two games, which in the past has meant chaos ensues. Let’s dive in and see what games and teams will have the biggest impact on the next rankings release for the Playoff Committee.
Current Predicted Rankings
Here are the predicted Playoff Committee Week 13 rankings. As a reminder, here is how the Rankings Right Now algorithm figures out how to rank each team before, during, and after the games have completed.
For games that have not yet been played, it takes the Las Vegas spread for each game to identify an “expected” score
For games in progress, it uses the same “expected” score until the start of the second half, when it then references the live game score
For games that have completed, it uses the final score of the game
Last Chance
This might be the last chance for Tennessee and Georgia to make their final statements for why they should be in the College Football Playoff. Tennessee only has one loss on the year, but losing to Georgia might be the final straw for the selection committee. According to the Rankings Right Now machine learning algorithm, a loss would send them down to #16. There is still room to move up in the rankings, but the Vols would be running out of time.
Using the What If simulation tool, flipping this game around and having Tennessee win 28-24, Tennessee would jump back over Indiana and BYU into the #5 ranking. It would also send Georgia all the way down to #18 with their third loss of the season, and maybe their final chance of breaking into the top 12.
Buffs Might Lose Ground
At the beginning of the year, a Utah vs CU game would have been thought to have huge Big 12 implications. Today, it is not nearly the game everyone was hoping. In addition, it might be even more terrible timing for Colorado.
As it currently stands, CU is predicted to drop in the rankings after a win against Utah. Utah might have put up a great fight against BYU, but now with even more health issues than before, it is almost as if CU is playing an early season non-conference opponent who is just there for the payday.
The selection committee won’t learn anything about CU this weekend if they just have a standard win. However, teams below CU like South Carolina and Clemson are both predicted to jump the Buffs in the rankings. The Gamecocks are playing a (somehow) ranked #23 Mizzou team, and Clemson is playing Pitt who is coming off back to back losses after starting the year out 7-0.
Taking a look 10,000 simulations of Week 12 games and where everyone is ranked at the end using the Rankings Right Now algorithm, CU has less than a 10% chance of moving up from their current #17 ranking.
Simulations
Continuing on with the spectrum of potential ranking results, after running 10,000 simulations using the Rankings Right Now machine learning model, here are the list of teams and the chance of them finishing each rank who had at least a 0.1% chance of being ranked in the top 16 rankings after Week 12.
There is still a big fight over that #5-#7 range between Tennessee, BYU, and Indiana
Clemson has a huge opportunity to beat Pitt this weekend and try to regain some ground. With a solid win, there is a 46% chance they can break into the top 16
Notre Dame is sitting at a 46.5% chance they move up above their current #8 ranking
Boise State has their first great chance to break into the top 10. They have a 61% chance of being ranked in the top 10 based on the simulation
BYU is currently a two point favorite against KU at home. Is this another obvious win scenario for BYU where Las Vegas doesn’t have them as a big favorite? We already saw this happen earlier this year with UCF
College Rank Em Challenge
Reminder for everyone to get their picks in for the College Rank Em Challenge! Deadline closes at noon ET kickoff.
Never heard of this before? Check out this video that walks through the fun competition!
What’s Next?
Watch football all day Saturday
Newsletter Sunday morning going through everything we watched over the weekend and the final Rankings Right Now predictions for the Week 13 Playoff Committee Poll
Newsletter Wednesday morning evaluating the Rankings Right Now final predictions with the true Week 13 Playoff Committee rankings
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