Conference Races

Every league

The favorite in each, and how often the last berth in the title game is level on conference percentage — which is to say, how often a tiebreaker decides who plays for the trophy rather than the standings deciding it outright.

American Athletic standings, projected

Title game and title are different questions, and the gap between them is how often a team is expected to get there and lose. The projected conference record is the mean across all 50,000 seasons, so it carries fractions a real record cannot.

The title games it stages most often

Every pairing the simulation produced, most common first. A championship game is two teams surviving twelve weeks apiece, so even the likeliest is a small number — the shape of this list says more than its top row.

• Memphis vs UTSA6.5%
• Memphis vs North Texas5.3%
• North Texas vs South Florida5.1%
• Memphis vs Tulsa4.9%
• Memphis vs South Florida4.9%
• South Florida vs Tulsa4.8%

Since preseason

The American Athletic’s best title odds, week by week, on a shared 0–100% scale. Earlier weeks are replayed with the current model rather than recorded at the time, so they say what today’s simulation makes of that week.

17%Memphis+2.415%South Florida+5.415%UTSA+3.111%North Texas+10.110%Tulsa+5.59.1%Navy−13.5

Who moved

Change in title probability from week 1 to week 2. A league is zero-sum — every point one team gains came off the rest of them.

• North Texas1.1% → 11%+10.3
• South Florida7.9% → 15%+7.4
• UTSA11% → 15%+3.5
• Florida Atlantic1.2% → 3.5%+2.3
• Temple2.4% → 4.1%+1.7
• Tulsa11% → 10%-0.9
• Memphis21% → 17%-3.9
• Army12% → 4.8%-7.1
• Navy22% → 9.1%-12.8

What a conference loss costs

How often each team still wins the American Athletic having lost exactly that many league games. Affords is the most it can take and stay better than even — blank for a team that is not better than even unbeaten.

Share of simulated seasons a team makes the field, given it finishes with exactly that many losses. ⚠ These are raw conditionals: a team that reaches 9–3 against a brutal schedule is a better team than one that reaches 9–3 against an easy one, and some of the spread below is that rather than the committee rewarding a résumé.

Team	0L	1L	2L	3L	4L	5L	6L	7L	8L	9L	Affords
Memphis	63	46	14	0	0	0	0	0	—	—	0
South Florida	61	44	14	0	0	0	0	0	—	—	0
UTSA	67	48	11	0	0	0	0	0	0	—	0
North Texas	61	43	11	0	0	0	0	0	—	—	0
Tulsa	64	45	13	0	0	0	0	0	—	—	0
Navy	—	64	34	1	0	0	0	0	0	—	1
East Carolina	52	33	6	0	0	0	0	0	0	—	0
Tulane	58	42	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	—	0
Army	—	59	32	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1
Temple	56	36	7	0	0	0	0	0	0	—	0
Florida Atlantic	53	37	8	0	0	0	0	0	—	—	0
Rice	—	32	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	—	—

What decides it

The remaining league games ranked by how much the title race is reshaped depending on who wins — measured across every team’s odds at once, not just the favorite’s. Early in a season the front-runner’s own schedule dominates this list, which is not a quirk of the method: it is what a one-team league looks like in September.

• wk11Memphis at South Floridamoves Memphis21.9
• wk6South Florida at UTSAmoves South Florida21.3
• wk11North Texas at UTSAmoves UTSA19.6
• wk12Memphis at Navymoves Memphis19.2
• wk13Tulsa at UTSAmoves UTSA19.0
• wk7Navy at UTSAmoves UTSA18.1
• wk8UTSA at Tulanemoves UTSA17.6
• wk7Memphis at Tulanemoves Memphis17.3