John Ewing

Special for FootballFour.com

PredictionMachine.com's Director of Research and Analytics, John Ewing, takes a look at what the College Football Playoffs look like through 50,000 simulations of the four-team playoff. Follow John on Twitter@JohnEwing for more notes from his analysis and to let him know what else you may like to see with these projections.

Who's in? The question has been answered and the four-team playoff is set.

Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State (just like we predicted in August) will participate in the first ever College Football Playoff.

Which team is the most likely champion and what are the odds each team wins the title?

How this works

The Predictalator uses current rosters and strength-of-schedule and efficiency-adjusted team and player stats (weighted slightly more toward recent games), to play every game 50,000 times before it's actually played. For this analysis, we are tracking how likely a team is to make it to and win the championship of the College Football Playoff.

The Most Likely Champion Is…

Alabama has been No. 1 in our Power Rankings for eight consecutive weeks. The Crimson Tide is the only team in the country ranked in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency.

The SEC champions are the No. 1 seed for a reason and would be favored on a neutral field against Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State and every other team in the country by at least a field goal.

After 50,000 simulations, the most likely national champion is Alabama. Alabama wins 44.8% of all the simulated tournaments. In the most likely National Championship Game, Alabama defeats Oregon 58.4% of the time by an average score of 34-30.

The biggest impact of the selection committee's ranking is not the fact that TCU was left out of the Playoff, but rather that Florida State moved from the fourth to the third seed.

The Seminoles have won three consecutive ACC titles, they have a winning streak of 29 consecutive games and are defending national champions. However, Florida State ranks just 14th overall in our Power Rankings. There are 13 teams in the country that would be favored against Florida State on a neutral field.

Like in March Madness, seed and path to the championship are critical to each team's projected playoff probabilities. Had Florida State remained the fourth seed, Alabama's odds to win the title improve.

Alabama, in a bracket in which it played Florida State in the semifinal instead of Ohio State, would become more than 50% likely to win its fourth title in six years. Oregon, in this hypothetical scenario, would see its championship odds drop to less than 30% with a tougher opening-round matchup against Ohio State.

Based on the analysis, here is the projected College Football Playoff bracket:

Semifinals

No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 4 Ohio State | Alabama wins 69.9% of the time and by an average score of 30-21.

No. 2 Oregon vs. No. 3 Florida State | Oregon wins 72.6% of the time and by an average score of 41-28.

National Championship

No 1. Alabama vs. No. 2 Oregon | Alabama wins 58.4% of the time and by an average score of 34-30.

The likelihoods for each team to win the championship are 44.8% for Alabama, 33.9% for Oregon, 14.7% for Ohio State and 6.6% for Florida State.