ESPN's College Football Playoff Predictor has updated again. Here's where South Carolina stands
ESPN.com’s College Football Playoff predictor isn’t perfect because it applies analytics to a situation that ultimately will be decided by a committee of humans. But it does provide a nice guide and discussion piece about which teams have the best chance to make this year’s College Football Playoff.
Because of that human element, the predictor has been updating twice each week, once on Sunday to account for Saturday’s games and again after the latest CFP rankings are released.
[More for subscribers: What latest rankings mean for South Carolina’s College Football Playoff chances]
While the Gamecocks won their game on Saturday and got a lot of help from the teams around them last week, the logjam of SEC teams ahead of them in Tuesday’s rankings is still limiting their upside at this time.
With the committee putting South Carolina behind fellow three-loss SEC teams Alabama and Ole Miss, the predictor currently gives South Carolina a 20 percent chance of making the 12-team field, which is three percentage points lower than its chances in Sunday’s update.
The Gamecocks do, of course, have one more huge opportunity to pad their resume when they travel to Clemson this weekend to renew the annual rivalry in what may be the biggest game in the matchup’s history.
Beat the Tigers, who are currently No. 12 in the CFP Top 25, and South Carolina’s chances of making the playoff jump to 46 percent, according to the predictor.
While that’s just under a coin flip, it’s also 12 percentage points lower than it was in Sunday’s update.
Top 10
- 1New
Saban chirped
Big 12 comes after GOAT
- 2
DJ Lagway
Fan flashes Florida QB to Pope
- 3Hot
Strength of Schedule
CFP Top 25 SOS ranking
- 4
Alabama needs a prayer
Tide can make the CFP but needs help
- 5
3 ACC teams in CFP?
Path for ACC outlined
South Carolina is still very much in the hunt but is going to need to win and play very well against Clemson and get more help around it.
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As a reminder, the CFP committee’s top 12 teams won’t correlate exactly with the 12-team field.
The CFP will consist of the top five highest-ranked conference champions and the next seven highest-ranked at-large schools. The top four conference champions will receive the top four seeds and a first-round bye. The fifth conference champion will be seeded by its CFP ranking. If that ranking is outside of the top 12 it will be seeded 12th as the final team in the field.
The teams seeded 5 through 12 will fight it out in the first round with the winners advancing to the quarterfinal round to face the top four seeds.
The Gamecocks and Tigers are set for a noon showdown Saturday in Clemson.
College Football Playoff Predictor Methodology
ESPN Analytics uses FPI to simulate the entire college football season 200,000 times. A committee model is applied to mimic College Football Playoff selections and seeding in order to generate a 12-team bracket for each simulation. The most likely CFP teams are provided for user selections. After user inputs, a likely bracket is generated and randomly simulated using FPI.
