LSU jumped above Ohio State to the No. 1 spot in the final College Football Playoff rankings that were released on Sunday, which earned them a game against No. 4 Oklahoma rather than No. 3 Clemson. The debate on which top team would avoid facing Clemson was one of the more intriguing storylines on Sunday morning and statistics suggest that the Tigers are far more likely to win the national championship now than they were heading into championship weekend.
Stephen Oh, the principal data engineer for SportsLine, crunched the numbers and determined the simulated percentage to win the national championship based on the matchups and computer-generated statistics.
| Team | Simulated national title % (Last week) | Simulated national title % (This week) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| LSU | 25% | 40.7% | +15.7% |
| Ohio State | 32% | 28.8% | -3.2% |
| Clemson | 26% | 27.1% | +1.1% |
| Oklahoma | 3% | 3.4% | +0.4% |
Why is there such a big gap between LSU and the field? The matchup vs. the Sooners is the biggest reason.
"The odds-makers agree that facing Oklahoma is a huge benefit to LSU," Oh said. "A week ago LSU was 3/1 to win the championship so their implied percentage improved from 25% to 41.7%."
That's quite the jump considering Clemson rolled in the ACC Championship Game and Ohio State overcame a sluggish start to run away from Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game. Of course, some of that jump was caused by LSU's win over then-No. 4 Georgia in the SEC Championship Game. But it's a stretch to say that the win over the Bulldogs caused that much of a move.
Another interesting nugget is that Oklahoma's simulated chances only went up 0.4% despite Baylor and Utah both being in the mix last week. The Sooners, of course, dispatched of the Bears in overtime on Saturday and the Utes lost to Oregon in the Pac-12 Championship Game on Friday night.
