2024 College Football Playoff Survivor Pool Strategy

We break down strategies for winning CFP Survivor Pools in 2024, including some thoughts on Splash Survivor contests.

One format that may grow in popularity in 2024 and beyond, with the advent of the new 12-team playoff format, is survivor pools around College Football Playoff games.

These types of pools are an exciting new contest for the CFP, combining long-term planning with short-term risk management. The principles are similar to those of March Madness survivor contests: you need to carefully consider both the objective odds of advancing and how your selections impact your ability to keep picking winners in later rounds.

For other college football playoff related pools, we have already covered some other types like playoff confidence and bracket pools in this article.

2024 College Football Playoff Survivor Pool Strategy

College Football Playoff Survivor pools are likely to be quite wild, even compared to typical survivor pools. The choices get limited quickly. The bracket, at least the 2024 version of seeding, has some teams that project as big underdogs getting byes in place of top contenders. Failing to plan ahead puts you at risk of running out of options as the choices become increasingly limited with each round. Selecting the team that ultimately wins the title too early in the contest could prevent you from winning the pool—unless the final outcome results in a split.

2024 Advancement Odds

Here are the odds of advancement for each team in the 2024 College Football Playoff, listed in descending order by playoff seed (the top four teams have a bye into the semifinals).

Seed	Team	Quarterfinals	Semifinals	Final	Champion
1	Oregon	100.0%	51.3%	31.3%	18.5%
2	Georgia	100.0%	59.4%	38.2%	18.5%
3	Boise State	100.0%	20.2%	3.6%	0.7%
4	Arizona State	100.0%	21.4%	3.8%	1.0%
5	Texas	79.9%	65.7%	31.8%	18.6%
6	Penn State	74.6%	62.0%	29.0%	12.7%
7	Notre Dame	73.4%	32.7%	19.9%	8.7%
8	Ohio State	70.8%	37.3%	23.6%	14.4%
9	Tennessee	29.2%	11.4%	6.0%	3.0%
10	Indiana	26.6%	7.9%	3.8%	1.1%
11	SMU	25.4%	17.8%	5.5%	1.6%
12	Clemson	20.1%	12.9%	3.6%	1.3%

If you are planning ahead and trying to figure out what team(s) you want to have available to pick to win the semifinal and championship game, those numbers represent our best estimates of the likely finalists and champion.

• Oregon, Georgia, and Texas have similar odds to win the title;
• Penn State has similar odds to reach the final as those other three, but a little lower title odds;
• Notre Dame and Ohio State also have a reasonable chance to reach the final and win it all.
• We do not give any of the other six teams above a 6% chance to reach the final or 3% chance to win it all.

Paying Attention to Your Path

In many survivor contests, you’ll need to make multiple picks in early rounds (e.g., two in the first round, two in the quarterfinals) before narrowing to one pick in the semifinals and championship. This structure demands careful planning to ensure you don’t run out of viable teams. Even if you only have to pick one team per round, you still need to think about which teams you want to potentially save. 

In a lot of playoff survivor contests, whether it be the NFL, College Basketball, or now College Football, the decisions you make in the first couple of rounds will largely set what you have to pick later.

Projecting Pick Popularity

Another key factor in survivor strategy is anticipating how other players will approach their selections. Public perception, seeding, and the spread often influence popular picks. For example:

• Spread: Teams with large spreads are usually more popular, regardless of their seed.
• Seed Number: Public players tend to overvalue lower seeds with favorable spreads in early rounds.
• Perceived Title Contenders: Teams seen as serious championship threats may be saved for later rounds, leading to lower early-round popularity.
• Availability: Teams cannot be used more than once, so if you can anticipate what teams will have earlier popularity, you might set up later-round value.

Understanding these tendencies can help you find contrarian opportunities, especially in large pools where differentiating yourself is essential.

Big No-No: Switching Survivor Paths on the Same Side of Bracket 

While there are a lot of strategic gray areas where you can balance risk-taking now versus saving teams, one thing you must avoid in pools is switching your path but staying on the same side of the bracket with your next pick.

What do we mean by this?

Let’s say you pick Penn State over SMU in the First Round. If they win (setting up a matchup against Boise State), picking Georgia in the Quarterfinals puts you at high risk of running out of picks. 

If Penn State wins the Quarterfinal, you are finished with options on that side of the bracket. You then have to make a pick from the other side in the semifinal round and are guaranteed to have no pick in the final. The only way you would have an option in this example is if Boise State beats Penn State (and then, you almost certainly have to pick Boise State over Georgia in the semis).

So your options are to (a) pick directly against the team you picked in the first round next or (b) switch to picking a Quarterfinal matchup on the other side of the bracket and hoping your first-round pick loses within the next two games, leaving you a championship game option.

2024 Splash College Football Playoff Survivor Format Strategy

Splash Sports is one specific site that runs College Football Playoff Survivor Pools, and there are several different pools with different entry amounts and maximum pool sizes.

The default format for the Splash CFB Playoff Survivors is as follows:

• First Round: You must pick 3 teams
• Quarterfinals: You must pick 2 teams
• Semifinals and championship: pick 1 team in each round

We’ll cover some strategy implications specific to this format.

Three First Round Picks Makes Full Paths Hard to Hit

There are only four games in the first round. You have to pick three of those four winners successfully to just advance out of round 1. That means all of the following, as it relates to the 2024 CFP:

• If two teams that played in the First Round reach the final (say, Penn State vs. Texas) it is impossible for anyone to have a finals pick.
• You will need to either pick No. 3 Boise State or No. 4 Arizona State (or both) to win in the Quarterfinals as underdogs, or hope that they reach the Semifinals anyway, in order to have two potential options to pick in the semifinals and finals in most scenarios.
• All path options are long shots.

For example, the following path in the Splash contest has only about a 1-in-200 chance of happening:

• Successfully pick No. 5 Texas, No. 6 Penn State, and No. 7 Notre Dame to win in the First Round;
• Pick both No. 4 Arizona State and No. 3 Boise State in the Quarterfinals, and win both in an upset;
• Then pick Georgia and Oregon/Ohio State/Tennessee winner in some order in the Semifinals and Finals.

There are few paths where your chances of getting through to the finals, while having to pick three teams right away, two of whom will likely be favored in the next round, is much above 1%.

Playing Pot Odds Upsets

As a result, one strategy might be to treat these pools as a long shot parlay in the First Round. With entries having to pick from three of the four games, the pick popularity on the favorites could get quite high.

While it’s not going to be a one-to-one comparison, here is the public pick rates we are seeing in game winner pick’em pools for the four First Round games:

• No. 5 Texas (92%) vs. No. 12 Clemson
• No. 6 Penn State (86%) vs. No. 11 SMU
• No. 7 Notre Dame (82%) vs. No. 10 Indiana
• No. 8 Ohio State (68%) vs. No. 9 Tennessee

We think more entries might save Texas, relative to some others, for future value purposes, compared to those pick rates, they are still instructive on how the favorite vs. underdog distributions might fall. Let’s take those and try to guess how the pick distribution might go over a contest where you have to pick three different winners each, across 100 entries.

We wouldn’t be surprised to see the following pick rates:

• Notre Dame, Penn State, and Texas: 65-75% each
• Ohio State: 55-65%
• Tennessee: 20-30%
• SMU and Indiana: around 10%
• Clemson: 5% or less

In this contest, either all the favorites are going to win in the first two rounds, and there will be no more picks that can possibly be made, with a big pot split among a bunch of entries, or upsets are going to happen, wiping out more of the pool. If you are entering this contest hoping for a bigger payday, you probably just want to lean into some upsets at pot odds.

You can either pick 2 favorites, one dog, and leave the other game open, allowing you to (a) benefit if there is an additional upset wiping out a chunk of the pool or (b) still have that favorite available if you get through with your three-team parlay that includes an upset. You can also go two upsets and one favorite. Is such an outcome likely? No, you but you are trying to hit the equivalent of a 20-to-1 long shot, where if it hits, only one or two other entries out of every 100 are still going to be alive.