Navigate has created a model to predict who the CFP selection committee will choose after the regular season is completed and the conference championship games have been played.  These are not rankings. They are the projected chances of each school making the CFP.

How It Works:

  • Our CFP prediction model works by inputting actual results and running 3,500 simulations of the rest of the 2021 season to determine the likelihood each school is selected based on how the CFP committee has made its decisions in the past.
  • When initially building our model, we used the poll results from the pre-CFP era to give us a more robust sample of how people in and around the sport of college football have ranked teams in the past 25 years.
  • Our model is calibrated to prioritize and weight the factors that appear to influence the committee and deprioritize those that don’t.

Accuracy of the Model:

  • Our model is 28-for-28 in identifying the CFP’s top 4 after the conference championship games.

Please Note:

  • These results do NOT reflect whether we think a school is good or bad or deserving of a CFP selection. Our opinion is NOT reflected in these projections and is completely moot. As stated above – and worth repeating – our model’s sole purpose is to reflect how the CFP committee has made selections in the past in order to predict the future.
We’ve teamed up with AthleticDirectorU to release our probabilities over the next six weeks. Navigate President Jeff Nelson and/or SVP, Client Strategy Jordan Bloem, plus a special guest, will join Matt Brown for a podcast to breakdown and discuss the probabilities each week.
Read the full article and listen to the podcast from this week (Nov. 2).

The below graphic breaks down the average number of teams from each conference selected to the playoff in our 3,500 simulations. The SEC is currently the only conference with an average above 1, and is the most likely conference to get 2 teams selected (most likely Georgia and Alabama).

Check out last years projections here.