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.

Pac-12 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.

• Boise State vs San Diego State23%
• Boise State vs Washington State12%
• Boise State vs Oregon State10%
• Boise State vs Fresno State7.7%
• Boise State vs Texas State7.0%
• Boise State vs Colorado State6.0%

Since preseason

The Pac-12’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.

51%Boise State+17.118%San Diego State−1.48.7%Washington State+1.06.1%Oregon State−0.85.0%Fresno State−8.73.9%Texas State−8.5

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.

• Boise State34% → 51%+17.1
• Colorado State1.9% → 3.8%+1.9
• Washington State7.7% → 8.7%+1.0
• Utah State3.8% → 3.2%-0.6
• Oregon State6.9% → 6.1%-0.8
• San Diego State20% → 18%-1.4
• Texas State12% → 3.9%-8.5
• Fresno State14% → 5.0%-8.7

What a conference loss costs

How often each team still wins the Pac-12 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	Affords
Boise State	78	66	37	4	0	0	0	—	1
San Diego State	64	47	21	2	0	0	0	0	0
Washington State	53	41	18	1	0	0	0	0	0
Oregon State	51	37	17	1	0	0	0	0	0
Fresno State	53	37	17	1	0	0	0	0	0
Texas State	51	37	16	1	0	0	0	0	0
Colorado State	50	37	18	2	0	0	0	0	—
Utah State	54	39	15	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.

• wk12San Diego State at Boise Statemoves Boise State34.9
• wk11Oregon State at Boise Statemoves Boise State31.7
• wk9Texas State at Boise Statemoves Boise State30.9
• wk8Boise State at Washington Statemoves Boise State30.5
• wk10Boise State at Colorado Statemoves Boise State29.5
• wk5Utah State at Boise Statemoves Boise State29.5
• wk6Boise State at Fresno Statemoves Boise State28.7
• wk6San Diego State at Oregon Statemoves San Diego State19.6