Bowls/Playoff & Polls Thread

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#76      
KnoxIllini2
redwingillini11 said:
www.cbssports.com

College Football Bowl Projections 2025-26

CBS Sports experts select the college football teams they believe will make the NCAA National Semifinals at the end of the 2025 season and give projections for each game.
www.cbssports.com www.cbssports.com
Dec. 26GameAbove Sports
team logo

Illinois		vs.
team logo

Miami (Ohio)		Big Ten vs. MAC1pmDetroit, Mich.
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Personally: Illini in Detroit good.
Season Expectations: Illini in Detroit bad.
 
#82      
DeonThomas
Given we had to experience that ugly 3rd loss against WASH, I'll settle for a December 31, 2025 31-21 victory over Texas or Oklahoma in the Reliaquest Bowl.....on ESPN.
 
#85      
DeonThomas
There are still a lot of teams ahead of us in the CFP rankings who are going to lose another game yet this season (over the next 3 weeks). At the same time, the odds favor us to go 2-0...........finishing 9-3 with losses to #1 OSU, @#2 IND and @WASH.

We won't climb much because of the quality of our two remaining opponents, but we should be able to hold our own while waiting for those teams above us to lose. I predict we'll end up somewhere between #13 and #16.
 
#89      
Second place is 1st loser
Absolutely no chance. There world have to be a rationalization on how a team that has one quality win(USC), but got beat by 7 TDs @ Indiana, 3 TD's vs OSU at home and was never competitive in a game @ Washington. If we would have beaten Washington, one could argue that the road game vs Indiana was an outlier.

Beating a bad Wisconsin team and an average Northwestern team won't change those opinions. We had a SUPREMELY advantageous schedule this year, but ultimately.....we didn't play nearly well enough in the "must have" games to be remotely considered.
 
#91      
Lysol623
My ESPN ticker had us at #21 visiting Wisconsin. I said did a new poll get released?
 
#97      
Piotyr
WolfpackIllini said:
If we win our last 2 solidly, is there a chance we can make the top-12?
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Let's look at it logically.

Assume a best case scenario, that winning handily will allow Illinois to be seen as the best 3-loss team per current record, passing Texas and Tennessee. Even in that case, though, they won't be ahead of any 2-loss teams at the end of the year. That, guaranteed, puts them behind Indiana, Ohio State, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Ole Miss. Despite the weakness of the ACC and Group of 5 teams, that takes away 2 more spots automatically.

Then we have the rest of the teams currently ahead of Illinois, and remember that they play each other. One of Oregon or USC will finish ahead of Illinois, at the least. So even assuming insanity happens elsewhere in college football, that's 9th at best.

Now, let's be realistic. Georgia has a game remaining against a terrible FCS Charlotte team, that aren't realistically losing that game, and a 10-2 Georgia team is ahead of Illinois even if they don't make the SEC championship.

From there, to make the playoff, Illinois would have to pass 9 of Miami/Georgia Tech/Virginia/Oklahoma/Alabama/Vandy/Utah/BYU/Notre Dame. Even if half of them completely collapse, ALL of them collapsing is such an unrealistic possibility, that Illinois is not a feasible option to make the playoff (not just less than 1%, more like less than 1% of 1%).
 
#98      
Illini2010-11
WolfpackIllini said:
If we win our last 2 solidly, is there a chance we can make the top-12?
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Unfortunately it will be very similar to last season, where the Minnesota loss essentially eliminated us. This year was the clunker showing in Washington.

It is true that we lost to the two best teams, but the margin of defeats really hurt, especially the showing off the bye at Washington.

We can get close to top 15, but we really don't have any case at 9-3 to be anywhere close to top 11 needed to make CFP. If we lost three one score games, we would have a much stronger case. However, a net deficit of -88 points in the three losses is disqualifying.
 
#99      
green_bay_energy
Second place is 1st loser said:
0%
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For Illinois to crack the Top 12, the following 10 events likely need to happen simultaneously over the next two weeks:

  1. Illinois wins out (Probability: ~40%)
  2. #12 Utah (8-2) loses their final two games (to drop below 9-3).
  3. #13 Miami (8-2) loses to an unranked ACC opponent.
  4. #14 Vanderbilt (8-2) loses to Tennessee.
  5. #15 USC (8-2) loses to UCLA or Notre Dame.
  6. #16 Georgia Tech (9-1) collapses and loses out.
  7. #17 Texas (7-3) loses to Texas A&M (finish 7-4).
  8. #18 Michigan (8-2) loses to Ohio State (finish 8-3 or 8-4).
  9. #19 Virginia (9-2) loses to Virginia Tech.
  10. #20 Tennessee (7-3) loses to Vanderbilt (finish 7-4).

If we assign generous probabilities to each of these necessary upsets (e.g., giving the "Chaos" scenario a 20-30% chance per team), the cumulative probability of this specific sequence occurring is approximately:
P(Playoff)=0.40*(.25)^9 = 0.0000015
Translated: The chance is roughly 1 in 65,000.
 
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