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.

Conference USA 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.

• Kennesaw State vs Liberty12%
• Delaware vs Liberty11%
• Florida International vs Liberty9.8%
• Liberty vs Western Kentucky7.8%
• Liberty vs New Mexico State6.6%
• Jacksonville State vs Liberty5.8%

Since preseason

The Conference USA’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.

39%Liberty+8.515%Kennesaw State+5.712%Delaware+4.611%Florida International+4.47.8%Western Kentucky−11.27.1%New Mexico State+4.1

Who moved

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

• Liberty30% → 39%+8.5
• Kennesaw State8.9% → 15%+5.7
• Delaware7.7% → 12%+4.6
• Florida International6.6% → 11%+4.4
• New Mexico State3.0% → 7.1%+4.1
• Sam Houston0.5% → 1.5%+1.0
• Western Kentucky19% → 7.8%-11.2
• Jacksonville State22% → 4.5%-17.4

What a conference loss costs

How often each team still wins the Conference USA 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	Affords
Liberty	78	64	34	4	0	0	0	0	—	1
Kennesaw State	67	50	22	3	0	0	0	0	0	1
Delaware	70	52	23	2	0	0	0	0	0	1
Florida International	66	48	20	2	0	0	0	0	0	0
Western Kentucky	61	44	14	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
New Mexico State	58	41	16	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Jacksonville State	50	34	13	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Missouri State	55	40	18	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Sam Houston	—	37	13	1	0	0	0	0	0	—
Middle Tennessee	—	33	16	1	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.

• wk8Liberty at Kennesaw Statemoves Liberty31.5
• wk9Florida International at Libertymoves Liberty30.7
• wk5Liberty at Delawaremoves Liberty30.0
• wk12Western Kentucky at Libertymoves Liberty29.4
• wk10Liberty at New Mexico Statemoves Liberty29.2
• wk6Sam Houston at Libertymoves Liberty26.8
• wk11Middle Tennessee at Libertymoves Liberty25.8
• wk13Liberty at Missouri Statemoves Liberty25.3