Washington Ranked 12th in Initial College Football Playoff Rankings

The Washington Huskies ranked 12th in the initial College Football Playoff Rankings released tonight. The top-4 (and playoff participants if the season ended today) were 1. Georgia, 2. Alabama, 3. Notre Dame, 4. Clemson.

Last season, Washington started out 5th in the initial Rankings, eventually fell to 6th after the loss to USC, then settled in at 4th to play Alabama in the Semifinals.

Fivethirtyeight.com currently gives the Huskies a 77% chance of making the playoff if they win all of their remaining games. FPI says that Washington has about a 26% chance of getting through the rest of their schedule unscathed including the Pac-12 Championship Game assuming it’s USC that wins the South.

This is a reminder that the initial rankings are likely to be quite different from how things end up. Last season, the top 4 were: 1. Alabama, 2. Clemson, 3. Michigan, 4. Texas A&M. Only two of those schools made it.

The other 2 participants, UW and Ohio State, were 5th and 6th. However, Penn State almost made it over Washington and started out just 12th. Last year was the closest the initial rankings have been to predicting the final ones in the 3-year history of the Playoff. In 2015, Oklahoma made it after starting out 15th in the initial poll and in 2014 Ohio State started out 16th.

The Pac-12 has 5 teams in the initial rankings including a pair that the Huskies still have to play in #21 Stanford and #25 Washington State plus the winner of the South (either #22 Arizona or #17 USC) should they win both of those games.

Here are the full Rankings with the number of ranked teams they have yet to play in the regular season, the % chance they win the rest of their regular season games, and the % chance they then go on to win their conference title game. Four of the teams ranked ahead of the Huskies have a better chance at winning out.