2024 College Football Playoff Predictor

With the College Football Playoff, a good thing is just too good not to share. With college football's Week 0 just days away, Sportskeeda has arrived at one of those times. The content team at Sportskeeda has put in a bunch of work and come up with perhaps the best pre-season football waiting tool yet. Meet the new best toy in college football, Sportskeeda's College Football Playoff Predictor.

What is the College Football Playoff Predictor?

This is a season-long tool designed to allow fans try out various scenarios and see how or even if they impact the race for the College Football Playoff. You'll see an example below of exactly how it works and what you can do with it.

The beauty of the predictor is that fans can do as much or as little work as they like. The predictor can forecast every game up to conference championships, or allow users to predict all the games, or any combination in between.

Whether it's running computer simulations, seeing how your favorite team can shake up the race, or following a conference's progress into the CFP bracket, the Predictor can do it all, and it'll be updated throughout the season so that it's consistent fresh, accurate and fun.

How does the College Football Playoff Predictor 2024 work?

Again, exactly what the predictor does depends entirely on what you ask it to do. At the root of the College Football Playoff Predictor is a proprietary, state-of-the-art, mathematically advanced algorithm that will predict college football games.

Users can have the algorithm simulate the entire season in a couple minutes, or a week at a time. Users can fill in games with their team or their conference and have the algorithm do the rest. Again, the Predictor will be updated as the season goes, so users won't have to input the games that have already been played.

Think of the Predictor as your friendly mathematical genius that can forecast as much or as little of the upcoming college football season as you ask it to. And the pot of gold at the end of the mathematical rainbow is a College Football Playoff bracket.

Why Use the College Football Playoff Predictor?

Long story short, while the Playoff has been around a while, the 12-team playoff is brand new. Also, the conferences have undergone several significant rearrangements from last season.

The single biggest story of the 2024 college football season is which teams will be in the Playoff. And of the 12 teams that reach the Playoff, what will be their potential paths to the national championship?

While the Predictor can do many other fascinating things, helping fans forecast and understand the game to game implications for the Playoff is the key concept in question.

Weekly Playoff Predictions

While the College Football Playoff Predictor 2024 is a great tool for preseason pondering, be assured it'll be a dynamic and active week-to-week tool. Fans should bookmark it, because after week 1, the upsets of the season will be factored into the Playoff hunt moving ahead.

Also, the deeper the season goes, the more insightful the algorithm's calculations will be on various games. What happens if Michigan beats Ohio State again? In a world where no games have yet been played, the impact is a bit muted. But what if a Michigan team that has started 6-0 is projected to beat a 6-0 Ohio State team? The algorithm will show very different results.

So not only is the Playoff Predictor interesting now, it'll continue to be useful throughout the entirety of the college football season.

How Many Teams Qualify for the College Football Playoff?

A dozen teams will make the 2024 Playoff, up from four in previous seasons. The champions of the top five conferences in the nation will earn automatic Playoff spots, with the top four (which is highly likely to be the SEC, ACC, Big Ten and Big 12) earning first-round byes.

The first-round games will pit the other eight teams, with seeds facing off from best to worst-- i.e. the No. 5 team will play the No. 12 team, the No. 6 team will play the No. 11 team, etc. Those games will take place at the location chosen by the better seeded team, presumably (but not certainly) its home field.

The winners of the first-round games will then play the quarterfinals the following week against the top four opponents. The No.1 overall seed will play the winner of the No.8/No. 9 game, with the No. 2 seed playing the winner of the No. 7/No. 10 game, while the No. 3 seed plays the winner of the No. 6/No. 11 game and the No. 4 seed plays the winner of the No. 5/No. 12 game.

The quarterfinal and then semifinal games will essentially replace the traditional New Year's Six bowl games (Rose, Peach, Fiesta, Orange, Cotton and Sugar Bowls). The winners will then compete each succeeding week, until the national championship game is played.

The playoff in 2024 will start with two games on December 20, 2024, with two more games played the next day. The Playoff field could expand, most likely next to fourteen teams at some future date.

What else can the College Football Playoff Predictor 2024 do?

Even if your favorite team is going to end up far, far away from the Playoff, the Predictor can be interesting. For instance, on a trial run, the Kentucky Wildcats simmed to an 8-4 season that included several surprises. Kentucky lost to Auburn and Louisville, but upset Tennessee and Texas is their simulated season. At 5-3 in the SEC, UK was nowhere near the Playoff.

Or you can simulate a conference season and see how your favorite league will shake out. In the simulated season above, the SEC championship was a three-way tie between 7-1 Georgia, Texas, and Alabama. Each of the three ended up in the College Football Playoff.

Share Your College Football Playoff Predictions

One of the best parts of the Predictor is being able to share your results. Let the rest of the Internet see exactly how the playoff shakes out. Let's see if Ohio State finally breaks through, or if Penn State's eternally forecast big year finally arrives.

In fact, to start the ball rolling, here's a playoff field prediction to start it all off. In this prediction, the algorithm will simulate the entire regular season. Since the user does have to choose a winner of the conference championship games, this simulation continued with entering the team with the better record. If both teams have the same record, the simulation chose the team with the higher preseason AP poll rating.

With the season simulated, here's an initial 12-team playoff, broken down by matchups.

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The simulated playoff field, via the College Football Playoff Predictor 2024.

No. 1 seed Georgia will play the winner of No. 9 Penn State at No. 8 Tennessee.

No. 2 seed Ohio State will play the winner of No. 10 Texas at No. 7 Oregon.

No. 3 seed Miami will play the winner of No. 11 Alabama at No. 6 Notre Dame.

No. 4 seed Baylor (!?!) will play the winner of No. 12 Arizona at No. 5 Memphis.

It seems safe to say that most predictions won't have a potential Baylor/Memphis battle (or Baylor/Arizona) in the CFP quarterfinals. The Bears beat Iowa State for the Big 12 title in this simulation.

These predicted matchups would be pretty fascinating otherwise. Georgia and Tennessee would be a regular season rematch, if it happened. Likewise, so would Ohio State versus Oregon. While Georgia and Ohio State performed as expected (each is 12-1), there's still plenty of room for chaos.

Dive in and enjoy! The College football playoff predictor 2024 is here at last!