College football · This week

College Football Games to Watch: Week 11

Updated · By Jay Egger

The game with the most riding on it this week is No. 11 Ole Miss at Oklahoma: Ole Miss's playoff odds are 30% with a win, 2% with a loss.

Ranked by playoff stakes, not by how good the teams are: a close game whose result reshapes the field beats a blowout between two top-10 teams. Also: projected playoff bracket · every pick this week.

Week 11, ranked by what's riding on it

  1. 1

    No. 11 Ole Miss at Oklahoma

    Sunday, Nov. 15, 1 p.m. ET · I have Ole Miss at 57%

    • Ole Miss playoff odds: 30% with a win, 2% with a loss
    • Oregon playoff odds: 40% if Oklahoma wins, 36% if Ole Miss wins
    • BYU playoff odds: 31% if Oklahoma wins, 27% if Ole Miss wins
    • LSU playoff odds: 58% if Oklahoma wins, 55% if Ole Miss wins

How the stakes are measured

For every game, I split my 10,000 simulated seasons by who wins it and compare every team's playoff odds in the two halves. The swing is how far those odds move, added up across the country (moves under 2 points are left out as noise). Stakes weights that swing by how open the game is: a game that's nearly decided can't move much in expectation, however big an upset would be. In plain terms, it's how many points of playoff odds the result should shift, all teams combined.

Win chances are my ratings', including home field; once a pick locks (36 hours before kickoff) it matches the published pick. The method and the track record of every pick are on the rankings page. I built this with Claude as a pair programmer.