COLUMBIA, Mo. — There’s a new mathematical toy on ESPN’s website: a playoff predictor.
You start by picking one of 24 teams that the site has determined have the best chance of making the 12-team College Football Playoff this fall — Missouri has the eighth-highest chance, level with Tennessee and Oklahoma at 37%. Then you pick the result of a few key games for that team, and ESPN spits out an updated probability of that team grabbing a spot in the bracket based on your predicted results.
The three games the ESPN algorithm needs to see for its Mizzou-specific fortune telling are the expected ones: at Texas A&M, at Alabama and home against Oklahoma.