Conference Races
Who wins each of the ten leagues that stage a championship game, from 50,000 simulated 2026 seasons — the same seasons behind the playoff page, so a team’s title odds and its playoff odds are two questions asked of one set of results rather than two models glued together.
A percentage is the share of those seasons ending that way, not a ranking and not a claim about any single game. Rebuilt 2026-09-11.
The leagues do not share a rule
- Sun Belt keeps divisions (East and West) and sends the winner of each — so its second-best record stays home whenever it shares a division with the best one. Taking the top two league-wide instead would stage an impossible title game in 33% of simulated seasons.
- ACC, American Athletic, Mountain West play an unbalanced conference schedule — members do not all play the same number of league games — so the standings are a winning percentage, not a win count. Ranking those by wins promotes whoever drew the extra game.
- Everyone else sends its top two by conference winning percentage, head-to-head breaking a tie at the line where the berth is decided.
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.
Sun Belt
14 teams in two divisions (East and West), 8 conference games. The winner of each division plays for the title — so the league's second-best record stays home whenever it shares a division with the best one.
Each crest carries the team’s chance of winning the league outright. Reaching the title game is a different number and it is in the table below.
Sun Belt 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.
- James Madison vs Louisiana11%
- James Madison vs Louisiana Tech11%
- Arkansas State vs James Madison7.9%
- Louisiana vs Old Dominion6.0%
- James Madison vs Troy5.3%
- James Madison vs South Alabama5.0%
What James Madison needs
James Madison wins the Sun Belt in 29% of simulated seasons and reaches the title game in 42%. These are the remaining results that move that number most — including games they are not playing in, which later in the year are the ones nobody works out for themselves.
- wk4James Madison at Old Dominiontheir game34.5
- wk6James Madison at Georgia Southerntheir game28.2
- wk5Marshall at James Madisontheir game27.8
- wk8James Madison at App Statetheir game27.3
- wk13Coastal Carolina at James Madisontheir game25.3
Points of James Madison’s title probability riding on each result.
Since preseason
The Sun Belt’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.
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.
- James Madison29% → 32%+3.0
- Louisiana Tech7.8% → 10%+2.2
- App State4.3% → 5.5%+1.2
- Louisiana9.1% → 10%+1.2
- Georgia Southern5.0% → 5.9%+0.9
- Coastal Carolina2.5% → 3.3%+0.9
- Old Dominion12% → 13%+0.8
- South Alabama3.2% → 3.7%+0.5
- Troy9.7% → 4.9%-4.9
- Marshall11% → 5.2%-5.6
What a conference loss costs
How often each team still wins the Sun Belt 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.
| Team | 0L | 1L | 2L | 3L | 4L | 5L | 6L | 7L | 8L | Affords |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 James Madison | 77 | 45 | 12 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | — | 0 |
 Old Dominion | 73 | 41 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
 Louisiana Tech | 60 | 35 | 10 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
 Louisiana | 51 | 28 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 0 |
 Arkansas State | 47 | 25 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | — |
 Georgia Southern | 71 | 39 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
 Troy | 62 | 33 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
 App State | 65 | 36 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
 Marshall | 63 | 30 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
 South Alabama | 47 | 28 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — |
 Coastal Carolina | 66 | 35 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
 Southern Miss | — | 28 | 9 | 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.
- wk4James Madison at Old Dominionmoves James Madison34.6
- wk6James Madison at Georgia Southernmoves James Madison28.2
- wk5Marshall at James Madisonmoves James Madison27.8
- wk8James Madison at App Statemoves James Madison27.3
- wk13Coastal Carolina at James Madisonmoves James Madison25.3
- wk9Troy at James Madisonmoves James Madison22.3
- wk7Georgia State at James Madisonmoves James Madison21.3
- wk8Old Dominion at Louisiana Techmoves Old Dominion21.2
What this is still blind to
- Two teams level on conference percentage are separated head-to-head. A three-way tie falls back to point differential, where real leagues run a longer ladder.
- The simulation is market-blind and its committee is fitted rather than consulted — the same four caveats the playoff page states in full.