Based on ESPN's 2025 season Football Power Index, Alabama Football is one of 21 teams with a better than 18.4% chance to make the CFB Playoff. The Crimson Tide has the fourth highest probability at 66.4%. According to the computer model, only Texas at 83.9%, Georgia at 78.6%, and Ohio State at 70.6% have better Playoff chances.
Alabama football fans can enjoy the FPI projections while also knowing that until at least half the season of game results, the model is short on data. Even with preseason imprecision, the model's 20,000 simulations provide results worthy of notice.
Most interesting is how many of the 21 teams are true National Championship contenders. Only four teams exceed 7% probability to win it all. Texas (24.1%) and Georgia (17.9%) are the favorites, with Alabama and Ohio State next, both at 10.8%.
Alabama Football and five other National Championship contenders
Only six teams are projected to have a greater than 7.3% chance of making the National Championship Game. They are Texas (37%), Georgia (30%), Ohio State (21.3%), Alabama (20.2%), Penn State (14.4%), and Oregon (10.4%).
In the four-team CFB Playoff era, it was often argued that only two or three teams were legitimate National Championship contenders. The situation has not changed much in the 12-team era. And it is likely to be similar in a 14 or 16 team format. A season with outlier success will not change the probability that every season, only a small number of teams are national championship caliber.
The core problem for the expanded Playoffs is that college football does not provide enough comparable data points to rank teams accurately. Last season, the final AP Poll ranked Boise State as college football's No. 8 team. In the 2025 season, the Broncos did not beat a single ranked Power Four team.
Florida AD Scott Strickland served on the CFP Selection Committee from 2018 to 2021. He recently said, "A committee is not ideal to choose a postseason. I question whether it is appropriate for college football." Strickland is correct. Selection Committee members are tasked with an impossible task. The nearly discarded automatic qualifier format proposal, which left no more than three at-large slots for future Selection Committees to choose from, countered the weaknesses of committee decisions.
Now what is only a guess. Many college football experts espouse the now outdated idea of choosing 'the best' teams to compete in thew annual Playoff. Unfortunately, no one has figured out how to identify the best.