Oklahoma's chances to make the College Football Playoff just surged while Notre Dame's fell
The College Football Playoff committee has released their third top-25 ranking, and it is unchanged from a week ago, with Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State, and Notre Dame ranked 1-4, respectively. However, it was Oklahoma that had the biggest win of the weekend.
Over at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver's model has simulated the rest of the season thousands of times and Oklahoma, despite being No. 7 in the ranking, has a 45% chance to be one of the four playoff teams after their win over Baylor. That is 28% higher than a week ago. Meanwhile, Notre Dame's chances actually fell this week, down 4% to 26%, thanks to losses by both Stanford, whom Notre Dame plays in two weeks, and Temple, a team Notre Dame already beat.
In other words, Nate Silver's model is predicting that if Oklahoma wins their last two games, against No. 18 TCU and No. 6 Oklahoma State, they will likely surge ahead of Notre Dame and No. 5 Iowa.
The other big jump this week was actually Alabama, who now has a 63% chance to make the playoff, up from 43% a week ago.
