College Football Playoff Bracketology

Versus Sports Simulator projects the 12-team College Football Playoff field after Week 3 of the 2026 season. Texas is the projected top seed. 5 of the 12 places go to automatic qualifiers and the rest are at-large. This one counts only games already played, so no remaining games are forecast. The selection committee picks the real field once the regular season ends. Updated September 13, 2026.

In this view, Versus projects the field the selection committee might pick if the playoffs began today. Only games already played are counted, so no part of the season is forecast. The records are real, but the choice of which teams a committee would take from those records is still a Versus estimate. The two choices above change only how Versus ranks the teams, and whether Versus simulates the rest of the season or counts only the games already played. Whichever pair you choose, the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC champions each receive an automatic bid.

The Field If the Playoffs Began Today

Projected Bracket

We favor the team shown advancing in every game, and the percentage beside it is its chance of winning that matchup.

Swipe the bracket sideways to see every round.

Championship Odds

Versus simulated this bracket 20,000 times. The figures below show how often each team reached each round across those runs. The percentage beside a team in the bracket above is for one game against one opponent. The figures below cover every way the rest of the bracket could fall, upsets included. Click any team in the bracket to advance it and these figures change with it.

Projected Conference Championships

Every automatic bid runs through a conference championship game. These are the matchups our projected standings produce and the team our model favors in each.

First Teams Out

How This Projection Is Built

Every unplayed game on the schedule is run through the same prediction model that powers the Versus game simulator, using the ratings as they stood after Week 3. Those simulations give every team in contention a projected record and a projected rating, and they project the final conference standings, plus a projected winner for each conference championship game.

How the Field Is Chosen

The field follows the 2026 rules. The ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC champions are guaranteed a place regardless of ranking. A fifth place goes to the highest-ranked team from the American, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, Pac-12 or Sun Belt, whether or not that team wins its conference. The remaining seven places go to the highest-ranked teams available. Seeding is straight: the four highest-ranked teams get the top seeds and the first-round byes, so an automatic bid guarantees a place in the field but not a seed.

How the Projected Rank Is Read

Every team carries two ranks on this page. One is where it stood in the Week 3 FBS rankings. The other is the projected final rank, which is where Versus expects that team to finish once the season is over. The projected final rank is the one that sets the seeding. It is also what separates two teams that finish with the same record.

Strength of Schedule and Strength of Record Are Not the Same Thing

Two columns in the table above look alike. Strength of schedule asks how hard a team's opponents are. Strength of record asks something harder. It asks how unlikely it would be for the 25th best team in the FBS to come out of that same schedule with that same record.

Indiana is the clearest example this week. Its strength of schedule ranks 95th in the FBS, among the easier ones. Going 3-0 against it is still the 23rd hardest record to achieve in the division, because a strong team dropped into that schedule would very likely have lost more often. An easy schedule and an easy record are different claims, and the committee weighs both.

How the Order Is Decided

The order of selection blends two things: how good the model thinks a team is, and how good that team's resume is. Blending them is our best approximation of how a committee weighs the two against each other. Beating a top-25 team in the division earns a little extra credit in the order, and the amount slides with how good that opponent was. A win over the top-ranked team in the FBS is worth half a place. A win over the 25th is worth almost nothing. A team with several of those wins might climb a place or two, which is enough to settle an argument between two similar resumes and not enough to lift a team over one with a better record.

Where the Numbers Come From

Most bracketology is one person's opinion written up each week. This projection is arithmetic. The same model that produces the FBS football rankings simulates every remaining game, applies the 2026 selection rules to the result, and seeds the field from it. Nothing is hand-placed, so the playoff rankings you see here move only when the games move them.

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