College Football Playoff projections after Week 2: Texas joins group of top contenders

Texas says hello to the national college football landscape. The Longhorns won in Alabama and led most of the game. The Texas is back jokes are easy, but just how back are the Longhorns?

My College Football Playoff projection model has unsurprisingly put Texas into the top tier of contenders. This week’s projections give eight teams a greater than 20 percent chance to make the CFP so it’s still wide open this early in the season.

If you’re new to this, here’s some background on the model: I have developed a season simulator that produces odds for winning the national title, making the College Football Playoff, and winning conference and division titles. After every simulation is complete, I have developed a model that selects playoff teams. The playoff selection model is quite simple and very similar, in my opinion, to the committee’s selection process in that it creates a “resume strength rating,” derived from prior resume strength ratings, past playoff rankings and playoff selections for each season.

Let’s take a look at what the numbers say after Week 2. Here are the top 25 national title contenders according to my model.

Projected college football national title chances

What stands out after Week 2

Georgia was a huge beneficiary this past week as the Bulldogs saw their title odds jump from 31.5 percent to 37.5 percent. Alabama losing certainly helped that, but the rest of the SEC has been off to a shaky start which ultimately gives Georgia an easier path than what was anticipated at the beginning of the year.

Hello, Texas

Texas saw its national title odds jump nearly four percent after beating Alabama in Tuscaloosa on Saturday. The Longhorns are now seen to win it all 6.1 percent of the time, up from 2.2 percent last week.

Is Oklahoma a contender?

A surprise contender is Oklahoma. Amongst all the early season chaos in the SEC and the gauntlet that is becoming the Pac-12, Oklahoma is setting itself up nicely for a run at the Playoff. Last week they were projected at 5.0 percent to make the CFP. This week that number has jumped to 25.0 percent.

Ohio State continues to fall. Not only do Michigan and Penn State continue to rise in projections while the Buckeyes remain stagnant, but Notre Dame has been moving up as well. Ohio State has seen its title odds drop by six percent in the last week while they still have road trips to Notre Dame and Michigan and host Penn State.

Where’s Colorado?!

Colorado makes the playoff 0.06 percent of the time. They failed to win it all in any of my sims though.