I’ve done something similar to this the past couple years in basketball, but never before in football because, frankly, it’s less interesting when your team’s on its way to a 3-9 season.
Basically, this is 100,000 Monte Carlo simulations of the rest of the Big 12 football season in Python, using Ken Massey’s rating system for the odds for every remaining game.
Here are the chances for each team to make the Big 12 Championship Game. The parenthetical is their regular-season chances of finishing 1st and 2nd.
TCU: 82.5% (60.4% 1st, 22.1% 2nd)
Oklahoma: 44.6% (20.5% 1st, 24.1% 2nd)
Oklahoma St.: 39.1% (9.4% 1st, 29.7% 2nd)
Iowa St.: 21.5% (7.6% 1st, 14.0% 2nd)
West Virginia: 7.4% (1.1% 1st, 6.3% 2nd)
Texas: 4.7% (1.1% 1st, 3.7% 2nd)
Kansas St.: 0.2% (0.0% 1st, 0.2% 2nd)
Texas Tech: 0.1% (0.0% 1st, 0.1% 2nd)
Baylor and Kansas: zippo
And here are the Championship Game matchups that have at least a 1% chance of happening:
Oklahoma/TCU: 32.0%
Oklahoma St./TCU: 29.2%
Iowa St./TCU: 13.6%
TCU/West Virginia: 6.0%
Oklahoma/Oklahoma St.: 5.8%
Iowa St./Oklahoma: 4.4%
Iowa St./Oklahoma St.: 2.7%
Oklahoma/Texas: 1.6%
TCU/Texas: 1.6%
Oklahoma St./Texas: 1.0%
(Slight boring caveat: The program only goes through the first two tiebreakers, since the third tiebreaker involves points and would be a pain in the butt to model. That said, the first two tiebreakers -- and situations with no tiebreaker necessary -- covered 99.2% of the simulations, so the odds wouldn’t change much.)
Obviously, the Iowa State/TCU game has large ramifications for both teams, but I wanted to see how much. The Championship Game odds if Iowa State wins (ignoring the other games that week):
Iowa St.: 43.7% (22.9% 1st, 20.7% 2nd)
TCU: 60.4% (35.0% 1st, 25.4% 2nd)
And the odds if TCU is the victor:
Iowa St.: 11.2% (0.3% 1st, 10.9% 2nd)
TCU: 93.2% (72.8% 1st, 20.4% 2nd)
And finally, here’s Iowa State’s chances of ending up at any given record:
5-7: 1.0%
6-6: 10.9%
7-5: 30.5%
8-4: 35.9%
9-3: 18.3%
10-2: 3.3%
Anyone want the odds for different scenarios, just ask -- they're easy to do after I spent the couple hours writing the program.
Basically, this is 100,000 Monte Carlo simulations of the rest of the Big 12 football season in Python, using Ken Massey’s rating system for the odds for every remaining game.
Here are the chances for each team to make the Big 12 Championship Game. The parenthetical is their regular-season chances of finishing 1st and 2nd.
TCU: 82.5% (60.4% 1st, 22.1% 2nd)
Oklahoma: 44.6% (20.5% 1st, 24.1% 2nd)
Oklahoma St.: 39.1% (9.4% 1st, 29.7% 2nd)
Iowa St.: 21.5% (7.6% 1st, 14.0% 2nd)
West Virginia: 7.4% (1.1% 1st, 6.3% 2nd)
Texas: 4.7% (1.1% 1st, 3.7% 2nd)
Kansas St.: 0.2% (0.0% 1st, 0.2% 2nd)
Texas Tech: 0.1% (0.0% 1st, 0.1% 2nd)
Baylor and Kansas: zippo
And here are the Championship Game matchups that have at least a 1% chance of happening:
Oklahoma/TCU: 32.0%
Oklahoma St./TCU: 29.2%
Iowa St./TCU: 13.6%
TCU/West Virginia: 6.0%
Oklahoma/Oklahoma St.: 5.8%
Iowa St./Oklahoma: 4.4%
Iowa St./Oklahoma St.: 2.7%
Oklahoma/Texas: 1.6%
TCU/Texas: 1.6%
Oklahoma St./Texas: 1.0%
(Slight boring caveat: The program only goes through the first two tiebreakers, since the third tiebreaker involves points and would be a pain in the butt to model. That said, the first two tiebreakers -- and situations with no tiebreaker necessary -- covered 99.2% of the simulations, so the odds wouldn’t change much.)
Obviously, the Iowa State/TCU game has large ramifications for both teams, but I wanted to see how much. The Championship Game odds if Iowa State wins (ignoring the other games that week):
Iowa St.: 43.7% (22.9% 1st, 20.7% 2nd)
TCU: 60.4% (35.0% 1st, 25.4% 2nd)
And the odds if TCU is the victor:
Iowa St.: 11.2% (0.3% 1st, 10.9% 2nd)
TCU: 93.2% (72.8% 1st, 20.4% 2nd)
And finally, here’s Iowa State’s chances of ending up at any given record:
5-7: 1.0%
6-6: 10.9%
7-5: 30.5%
8-4: 35.9%
9-3: 18.3%
10-2: 3.3%
Anyone want the odds for different scenarios, just ask -- they're easy to do after I spent the couple hours writing the program.
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