Conference Races

Every league

The favorite in each, and how often the last berth in the title game is level on conference percentage — which is to say, how often a tiebreaker decides who plays for the trophy rather than the standings deciding it outright.

Mid-American standings, projected

Title game and title are different questions, and the gap between them is how often a team is expected to get there and lose. The projected conference record is the mean across all 50,000 seasons, so it carries fractions a real record cannot.

The title games it stages most often

Every pairing the simulation produced, most common first. A championship game is two teams surviving twelve weeks apiece, so even the likeliest is a small number — the shape of this list says more than its top row.

• Toledo vs Western Michigan16%
• Ohio vs Western Michigan13%
• Miami (OH) vs Western Michigan9.7%
• Buffalo vs Western Michigan6.2%
• Miami (OH) vs Toledo5.8%
• Ohio vs Toledo4.5%

Since preseason

The Mid-American’s best title odds, week by week, on a shared 0–100% scale. Earlier weeks are replayed with the current model rather than recorded at the time, so they say what today’s simulation makes of that week.

42%Western Michigan+22.618%Toledo+1.110%Miami (OH)−18.511%Ohio+0.07.6%Buffalo−0.24.7%Bowling Green−0.2

Who moved

Change in title probability from preseason to week 1. A league is zero-sum — every point one team gains came off the rest of them.

• Western Michigan19% → 42%+22.6
• Massachusetts0.1% → 1.3%+1.2
• Toledo16% → 18%+1.1
• Kent State0.9% → 0.2%-0.7
• Central Michigan4.9% → 2.6%-2.2
• Eastern Michigan5.0% → 1.7%-3.3
• Miami (OH)29% → 10%-18.5

What a conference loss costs

How often each team still wins the Mid-American having lost exactly that many league games. Affords is the most it can take and stay better than even — blank for a team that is not better than even unbeaten.

Share of simulated seasons a team makes the field, given it finishes with exactly that many losses. ⚠ These are raw conditionals: a team that reaches 9–3 against a brutal schedule is a better team than one that reaches 9–3 against an easy one, and some of the spread below is that rather than the committee rewarding a résumé.

Team	0L	1L	2L	3L	4L	5L	6L	7L	8L	Affords
Western Michigan	76	62	23	1	0	0	0	—	—	1
Toledo	60	44	13	0	0	0	0	0	—	0
Miami (OH)	57	39	9	0	0	0	0	0	—	0
Ohio	45	30	8	0	0	0	0	0	—	—
Buffalo	58	41	12	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Bowling Green	60	37	7	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Central Michigan	45	30	6	0	0	0	0	0	0	—
Eastern Michigan	45	26	5	0	0	0	0	0	—	—
Massachusetts	37	21	6	0	0	0	0	0	0	—
Akron	—	26	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	—
Ball State	30	18	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	—
Kent State	—	16	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	—

What decides it

The remaining league games ranked by how much the title race is reshaped depending on who wins — measured across every team’s odds at once, not just the favorite’s. Early in a season the front-runner’s own schedule dominates this list, which is not a quirk of the method: it is what a one-team league looks like in September.

• wk8Western Michigan at Toledomoves Western Michigan34.4
• wk13Miami (OH) at Western Michiganmoves Western Michigan32.8
• wk5Western Michigan at Buffalomoves Western Michigan31.6
• wk9Bowling Green at Western Michiganmoves Western Michigan31.2
• wk12Eastern Michigan at Western Michiganmoves Western Michigan29.1
• wk7Western Michigan at Central Michiganmoves Western Michigan28.7
• wk11Western Michigan at Akronmoves Western Michigan27.9
• wk6Kent State at Western Michiganmoves Western Michigan27.7