How it works
Premier CFB reorganizes FBS college football into a five-tier pyramid. Real regular-season results decide where teams stand, where they sit next year, and who plays for the national title.
The pyramid
Starting from the final 1998 BCS rankings, every FBS team is placed into one of five tiers. Tier 1 (Premier) is the most exclusive; Tier 5 holds the rest.
Seeded from the 1998 BCS rankings · simulated from 1999 onward
Points
Teams earn points by winning games. The reward depends on the opponent's tier at the start of the season — beating a Premier team is worth more than beating a Tier 5 team.
| Result | Points |
|---|---|
| Win vs Premier (Tier 1) | +5 |
| Win vs Tier 2 | +4 |
| Win vs Tier 3 | +3 |
| Win vs Tier 4 | +2 |
| Win vs Tier 5 | +1 |
| Loss vs any FBS opponent | 0 |
| Win vs FCS | 0 |
| Loss vs FCS | −3 |
Tiebreaker: point differential (football points scored minus allowed). A team's tier is locked on day one — a late promotion playoff run doesn't change what you were worth as an opponent.
Promotion & relegation
After every regular season, teams move between adjacent tiers. Each boundary sees exactly 3 teams go up and 3 teams come down — keeping the pyramid balanced.
Promotion playoff (ranks 3–6)
Survival playoff (bottom 4)
This applies at every tier boundary (Tiers 1↔2, 2↔3, 3↔4, 4↔5). Relegation and promotion run simultaneously — winning the main playoff doesn't save you from the survival bracket.
Main playoff
A separate 12-team cross-tier championship runs after the regular season. Seeds 1–4 get first-round byes.
The main playoff and the promotion/relegation system are independent — you can be relegated and still win the national title, or survive as national champion from Tier 2.
Simulation method
Promotion playoffs, survival brackets, and the main playoff never actually happened — so each game is simulated using real regular-season performance:
projTop = (top.PPG + bottom.PPGAllowed) / 2 projBottom = (bottom.PPG + top.PPGAllowed) / 2
Both scores are sampled around their projection with realistic variance. Higher score wins. The same seed always produces the same bracket — results are stable across page loads. Dominant teams usually win, but upsets happen.