Nate Silver Released His New College Football Playoff Odds - And UCLA Is Emerging As The Darkhorse

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Ninth-ranked UCLA may not be seen as a national title contender to most college football fans, but their convincing 38-20 win over USC turned out to be the biggest of the weekend according to Nate Silver's model.

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Silver has updated his college football playoff projections at fivethirtyeight.com, and UCLA had the biggest jump, moving from a 8.2% chance to make the playoff last week to a 14.0% chance this week.

Here are the nine schools that still have at least a 5% chance of making the playoff and how much their odds changed after this weekend's results (odds are based on 10,000 simulations of the remaining regular season games):

  1. Alabama: 80.8% (+5.5% after 48-14 win over Western Carolina)
  2. Oregon: 75.7% (+3.6% after 44-10 win over Colorado)
  3. Florida State: 59.0% (-0.9% after 20-17 win over Boston College)
  4. TCU: 47.1% (-1.8%. TCU did not play this weekend)
  5. Ohio State: 42.0% (-1.5% after 42-27 win over Indiana)
  6. Baylor: 33.3% (+2.5% after 49-28 win over Oklahoma State)
  7. Mississippi State: 32.6% (+5.1% after 51-0 win over Vanderbilt)
  8. UCLA: 14.0% (+5.8% after 38-20 win over USC)
  9. Georgia: 6.1% (-1.6% after 55-9 win over Charleston Southern)

With only two weeks left in the season, there aren't many opportunites for the teams above UCLA to lose. However, UCLA still has the advantage of a potential Pac-12 championship game match-up with No. 2 Oregon, if the Bruins can get past Stanford first.

According to Silver, if UCLA wins both games their odds will increase to "about 50%."

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Meanwhile, if we assume the top-three teams win out and are in the playoff, Silver's model gives TCU a slight edge to grab the No. 4 spot over Ohio State, Baylor, and Mississippi State.