College Football Playoff Picture- Week 4 2026

The playoff race is heating up as we start conference play. It’s a bit interesting how few teams have >50% odds to make the playoff. There’s just not that much daylight between the top few teams in the country and the next tiers. We can see this in action this week- Texas is only a 4 point favorite on the road at Tennessee.

The SEC in particular has a lot of teams in the 30-50% range as we wait to see which upper middle class SEC teams emerge into playoff contenders.

Louisville is being under-discussed as a massive winner of last week’s games. Their matchup with SMU featured the ACC’s 2nd and 3rd best teams- so the Cardinals now hold a head to head win over their main competition to face Miami in the ACC title game.

Mississippi State, Florida and Ole Miss all picked up important wins in SEC play and saw their playoff odds rise accordingly as well.

I am personally higher on Iowa than my model is and they’ll rise further here if they can win at Michigan this weekend.

Texas A&M and LSU both took their first losses of the season and they play this weekend. It’s going to be looking late early for the loser of that matchup.

Louisville’s gain was SMU’s loss and the Mustangs are likely going to have to win out and hope Louisville trips up somewhere.

Elsewhere, USC and Texas Tech won, but looked unimpressive and see their odds drop. I’m particularly concerned with a USC team that might’ve lost to Rutgers if not for a 99 yard pick six.