The college football simulation is done

Over the next couple of days, Steve and I will be revealing the results of our giant annual college football simulation. Not today, because I wanted to give you ample warning, as well as a refresher on how it all works.
1) Taking the premises that a) the people demand a tournament, b) polls shouldn't have any bearing on who gets to play in championship games and c) not every team has a legitimate shot at the title because of their conference affiliations, we took the 120 teams and broke them into 12 10 team conferences based on geography, rather than a schools historic strength, size or fan base. The map for conference regions is above
2) We established a 12 team tournament in which all 12 conference champions in the tournament. It doesn't matter who you are, all that matters is that you won your conference. 2nd place doesn't cut it. 8 teams play an opening round game, with 4 teams getting a bye. This is exactly how the NFL playoffs are set up.
3) Seeds are based on overall record, conference strength and strength of schedule. How is conference strength established? At the beginning of the season, teams play a non conference schedule based on how a team did in the previous season. 1st place teams play 1st place teams, 2nd vs 2nd and so on. The conference pods, or the groups of conferences that play each other will rotate every 2 years (or, next year) based on conference strength over the course of the previous 2 years.
4) The entire season schedule is based on the record of the previous schedule so nobody can claim that they had a good record based simply on an "easy" schedule. Their home and road games will be distributed evenly among strong and weak conference teams.
5) Every single game is simulated on whatifsports.com. The tournament games are played at neutral sites, and would be played at the oldest Bowl game sites, with the national title being hosted by a rotating conference, but again, at a neutral site. This season, it would have been in the Gulf Coast conference, and likely at the new Cowboys Stadium. Frankly, though, that's sort of irrelevant to the whole simulation process.

So I think that's it. Steve and I each ran a simulation, so expect a couple of posts at least, based on the results and what will happen with the schedule for next year. Enjoy!