College Football Postseason Predictions

Bowl Game and Playoff Simulations

Author

Phil Henrickson

Published

January 13, 2025

Playoff Simulations

The following predictions come from a game prediction model I trained on historical college football games. The inputs into the game prediction model are team level measures of offensive/defensive/special teams efficiency, which I estimate from play by play data. I simulate each game thousands of times in order to estimate the home team’s win probability and expected margin of victory (or defeat).

About the Table

Team Ratings refer to the team’s estimated efficiency on offense and defense in terms of expected points added per play, adjusted for opponent quality.

Win Probabilities refer to the proportion of simulations in which the team won their matchup in each round.

2024 College Football Playoff Simulations
Results based on 10,000 simulations from team efficiency model
team
team rating
win probability
offense defense Round 1 Quarterfinal Semi-Final Championship
Ohio State 0.219 0.245 0.696 0.409 0.279 0.166
Notre Dame 0.215 0.257 0.658 0.388 0.265 0.158
Georgia 0.209 0.142 ✓ 0.454 0.284 0.143
Texas 0.133 0.290 0.759 0.570 0.270 0.143
Oregon 0.230 0.155 ✓ 0.458 0.276 0.138
Penn State 0.219 0.198 0.662 0.478 0.223 0.106
Indiana 0.192 0.198 0.342 0.158 0.088 0.042
Tennessee 0.092 0.226 0.304 0.133 0.073 0.031
SMU 0.132 0.165 0.338 0.211 0.072 0.027
Arizona State 0.152 0.054 ✓ 0.302 0.068 0.018
Boise State 0.135 0.047 ✓ 0.311 0.069 0.018
Clemson 0.130 0.120 0.241 0.128 0.034 0.010
2024 College Football Playoff Simulations
Results based on 10,000 simulations from team efficiency model
team
team rating
win probability
offense defense Round 1 Quarterfinal Semi-Final Championship
Ohio State 0.253 0.248 ✓ 0.642 0.439 0.267
Notre Dame 0.220 0.257 ✓ 0.599 0.368 0.198
Penn State 0.208 0.232 ✓ 0.766 0.367 0.167
Texas 0.150 0.270 ✓ 0.746 0.310 0.155
Oregon 0.234 0.157 ✓ 0.358 0.207 0.099
Georgia 0.204 0.144 ✓ 0.401 0.219 0.095
Boise State 0.135 0.045 ✓ 0.234 0.047 0.010
Arizona State 0.151 0.052 ✓ 0.254 0.043 0.009
2024 College Football Playoff Simulations
Results based on 10,000 simulations from team efficiency model
team
team rating
win probability
offense defense Round 1 Quarterfinal Semi-Final Championship
Ohio State 0.272 0.261 ✓ ✓ 0.666 0.407
Notre Dame 0.186 0.264 ✓ ✓ 0.546 0.254
Penn State 0.203 0.236 ✓ ✓ 0.454 0.184
Texas 0.155 0.257 ✓ ✓ 0.334 0.154
2024 College Football Playoff Simulations
Results based on 10,000 simulations from team efficiency model
team
team rating
win probability
offense defense Round 1 Quarterfinal Semi-Final Championship
Ohio State 0.276 0.270 ✓ ✓ ✓ 0.604
Notre Dame 0.197 0.251 ✓ ✓ ✓ 0.396

Game Predictions

About the Table

Quality indicates the quality of the teams involved in the game. This is the (harmonic) mean of the two team’s power ratings and is scaled to range from 0 to 100, with 100 indicating a game between highly rated opponents.

Interest indicates how interesting a game is expected to be based on the quality of the teams and how competitive the game is expected to be. I assign every game a competitive rating using a quadratic formula applied to Pr(HomeWin), which I use along with Quality in a weighted average to produce the Interest score. This ranges from 0 to 100, where 100 indicates a very competitive game between two highly rated opponents.

Pr(HomeWin) is the percentage of times that the home team won the game across every simulation.

Prediction is the average margin of victory for the winning team across all simulations.