According to SB Nation numbers guru Bill Connelly, there’s a 78 percent chance three or more teams are undefeated heading into conference championship weekend.
That sounds bad, but the way Connelly’s projections play out there may not be a ton of debate as to which teams deserve berths in the BCS Championship.
Connelly pegs Florida State as having the best chance to win out (79 percent), with games against Wake Forest, Syracuse, Idaho and Florida remaining before the ACC Championship. Alabama (63 percent) has the second-best shot of winning the rest of its games, even with LSU, Auburn and Mizzou/South Carolina still on tap.
After that, it’s Baylor (60 percent) and Ohio State (51 percent). Connelly gives Stanford a 65 percent chance of beating Oregon tonight, although if the Ducks win their chance at winning out jumps from 19 percent to 55 percent.
If Oregon wins, the Ducks have a 66 percent chance of making the BCS Championship, while FSU is at 48 percent. Basically, if Oregon beats Stanford, things get messy in the final year of the BCS.
Still, it was right around this time last year that the BCS looked messy, with undefeated Alabama, Oregon, Kansas State and Notre Dame all vying for two spots. Then Texas A&M beat Alabama, Stanford beat Oregon and Baylor beat K-State in successive weekends to largely clean things up. We haven’t seen any seismic, championship-altering top-five losses yet this year. Perhaps one (or two) are coming tonight.
One thing that is clear, though: Baylor needs some help to crack the top two, even with a rigorous schedule to close out the season. And Ohio State needs an awful lot of help to reach the BCS Championship.