What is Missouri football’s path to the CFP and SEC title game? At the first pitstop of the season, we checked in on MU’s postseason possibilities.
At the first pitstop of the season, let’s check in on the Tigers’ standing for the postseason.
Missouri football, which is currently working through its first of two idle weeks this season, has opened the 2025 campaign with five straight wins, which include an SEC victory over South Carolina and a Border War win over Kansas.
Since joining the SEC in 2012, Mizzou has only opened two other seasons with a 5-0 record.
Those years were 2013 and 2023, both of which ended with Mizzou winning the Cotton Bowl.
The Cotton Bowl, for what it’s worth, is a College Football Playoff quarterfinal site this season.
So, how do the Tigers stand in the race to make the 12-team field? And how about the SEC Championship in Atlanta?
Here’s what the models say about Missouri’s chances at playing in a major December matchup:
What are Missouri’s odds to make the College Football Playoff?
ESPN’s CFB Playoff Predictor currently gives Missouri a 34% chance to make the College Football Playoff.
The playoff simulator tool is a relatively easy way to waste a not-insignificant amount of time, which is exactly what we did.
In situations where we gave Mizzou two losses, the Tigers never ended up with less than an 88% chance of making the field. That was true for simulations in which Mizzou either won, lost, or did not make the SEC title game.
By giving Mizzou three losses (adding a dropped game at Vanderbilt), the Tigers’ CFP chances dropped to 23%.
The simulator only allows you to pick three swing games on each team’s schedule. It goes without saying that a four-loss team would not make the CFP, anyway.
On the other hand, a one-loss Mizzou team in the regular season, with or without a loss in the SEC title game, always made the CFP field and typically hosted a first-round game in the simulations that the Tribune ran.
PFF is broadly pretty bullish on the Tigers’ chances in its analytics-based power rankings, projecting MU with a 54% likelihood of making the 12-team field. That’s the fifth-best mark in the country in the site’s power rankings, with only Ohio State, Oregon, Miami, and Ole Miss checking in higher.
How can Missouri make the SEC title game?
Bill Connelly’s SP+ model for ESPN has the SEC projected to experience all sorts of chaos in the coming months.
As of Wednesday, Oct. 1, no team in the model had better than a 16.3% chance to win the SEC title, while 10 teams had better than a 5% chance. Did someone say ‘blender?’
And the top two, in terms of percentage chances of lifting a trophy? Ole Miss (16.3%) and Missouri (12.9%).
You could absolutely sign us up for Eli Drinkwitz vs. Lane Kiffin in Atlanta, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves there.
It’s still far too early in the season to start projecting paths to the SEC Championship. Charting all of the possible remaining situations and routes for the Tigers to reach their first conference title game since 2014 would require column inches we don’t have.
But what you need to know is that Missouri is in the mix. PFF, for instance, has Mizzou listed with the best percentage chance to win the SEC title at 19%. That, of course, relies on MU finishing the season strong, but it’s also indicative of the potential for SEC-wide cannibalism in the homeward stretch of the year.
There appears to be considerable parity in the league this season, and the potential for teams near the top to experience losses and remain relevant in the title race seems high.
We ran a few simulations, and while there is a path for MU to reach the SEC title game with two losses, it’s still a slim one.
For example, we ran a simulation where Missouri loses to Alabama (Oct. 11) and at Oklahoma (Nov. 22), resulting in a 6-2 mark in conference play. Doing our best to project the remainder of the games, Mizzou finished fourth in the SEC.
There were 10 teams with SEC records of .500 or better in that simulation. There will be 19 games between those 10 teams between now and the end of the season, which should illustrate how changeable and open to change the SEC title race is going to be in 2025.
There aren’t many — maybe any — easy games left on MU’s schedule. There are games the Tigers should and will be favored to win, but there aren’t any gimmes anymore.
Four of the Tigers’ remaining seven opponents are ranked in the top 20 of both major national polls. Two more are receiving votes in at least one national poll. The lone outlier, Arkansas, is going through a coaching change, which presents its own set of unknowns.
So, it’s all still on the table for Missouri. But there’s a lot left to figure out.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: What is Missouri football’s path to make CFP field, SEC title game?
Category: General Sports
