How SportsSimulate Works
What the probabilities on this site mean, and how they're calculated
Who runs this site
SportsSimulate is an independently run, hobby project — it isn't affiliated with any conference, team, or media outlet. It exists because working out "what does this team need to happen to make the championship game" by hand across dozens of remaining games is tedious, and a simulation can answer it directly. Questions, corrections, or feedback are welcome on the Contact page.
Monte Carlo simulation
Rather than predicting a single outcome, SportsSimulate replays each conference's remaining schedule tens of thousands of times, with every game's result drawn randomly according to a win probability estimate for that matchup. Counting how often a team ends up in a given scenario across all of those simulated seasons — winning the conference, making the championship game, finishing with a particular record — produces the percentages shown throughout the site. A "62% chance to make the CCG" means the team reached the championship game in roughly 62 out of every 100 simulated versions of the rest of the season.
Where the win probabilities come from
Each simulated game's outcome is drawn from a win probability derived from each team's current rating, based on results so far this season. Ratings are refreshed weekly as new games are played, so probabilities update throughout the season rather than being fixed at the preseason.
Tiebreakers
When simulated seasons end in a tie, the site applies each conference's actual published tiebreaker procedure (head-to-head record, common opponents, strength of schedule, and so on) to determine who advances. Some tiebreaker steps depend on things that can't be known in advance, like point differential in games not yet played — those cases show up as "uncertain" scenarios rather than a forced pick.
What-If and Flowchart tools
The What-If Explorer and CCG Flowchart pages let you pick winners for upcoming games yourself and see how the championship probabilities shift in response, using the same underlying simulation data — useful for answering "what does this team need to happen to make the title game?"
Limitations
These are statistical estimates, not predictions of what will actually happen — injuries, coaching changes, and plain old randomness in individual games mean any single week can look very different from the odds. Treat the numbers as a way to understand how much a given result matters, not as a guarantee.