It’s Iron Bowl time again, as Alabama and Auburn reunite in one of college football’s most passionate rivalries. Let’s take a look at the latest match prediction from an expert analytical football model that projects results and picks winners.

Alabama may have already played itself out of the College Football Playoff after last week’s stunning loss at unranked Oklahoma, but there’s still something resembling a path to the playoffs provided it can win this game and hope for some chaos around the country as well.

Auburn is one win away from bowl eligibility in head coach Hugh Freeze’s second season and is coming off four overtime wins against SEC title hopeful Texas A&M, and has a chance to snap Alabama’s 16-year double-digit hitting streak.

What do the analytics suggest will happen when the Crimson Tide host the Tigers in the Iron Bowl?

For that, let’s turn to the SP+ prediction model to get a preview of how Alabama and Auburn compare in this Week 14 college football classic.

As expected, the models favor the Crimson Tide over the Tigers, and by a decent margin.

SP+ predicts Alabama to defeat Auburn by an expected score of 34 to 18 and win the game by an expected margin of 16.2 points.

The model gives the Tide a strong 84 percent chance of outright victory.

SP+ is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency” that attempts to predict game outcomes by measuring “the most durable and predictable aspects of football.”

How good is this season? So far, the SP+ model is 349-321-8 against the spread with a 52.1 winning percentage after going 34-28 (54.8%) last weekend.

Alabama is an 11.5-point favorite against Auburn, according to the updated lines posted on FanDuel Sportsbook in this week’s matchup.

FanDuel lists the total as 52.5 points for the game (Over -110, Under -110).

And that put the money odds for Alabama at -430 and for Auburn at +330 to win outright.

If you use this prediction to bet on the game, you should take…

A wide variety of players expect the Tigers to keep things close against the Crimson Tide, according to the latest consensus picks for the game.

Auburn gets 62 percent of bets to either win outright in an upset game or to keep the margin under 12 points in a loss.

The other 38 percent of bets project Alabama will win the game and cover the double-digit spread.

Other than SP+, most other football analytical models side with the Crimson Tide over the Tigers.

That includes the College Football Power Index, a computer prediction model that uses data points from both teams to simulate games 20,000 times to pick winners.

Alabama is the heavy favorite in this year’s Iron Bowl, coming out in 87.7 percent of the latest computer simulations of the matchup.

That leaves Auburn as the presumptive winner in the remaining 12.3 percent of sims.

How does that translate into an expected margin of victory for the game?

Alabama is projected to be 17.4 points better than Auburn on the same field in both teams’ current makeups, according to the model’s latest projection.

More… Alabama vs. Auburn prediction: What the analytics say

1. Oregon
2. Ohio State
3. Texas
4. Penn State
5. Notre Dame
6. Miami
7. Georgia
8. Tennessee
9. SMU
10. Indiana
11. Boise State
12. Clemson
13. Alabama
14. Ole Miss
15. South Carolina
16. Arizona State
17. Tulane
18. state of Iowa
19. BYU
20. Texas A&M
21. Missouri
22. UNLV
23. Illinois
24. Kansas State
25. Colorado

Playoff seeding is not necessarily the same as the CFP Top 25 ranking, as some teams will be given higher seeds as conference champions

First round bye

No. 1 Oregon
Projected Big Ten champion

No. 2 Texas
Projected SEC champion

No. 3 Miami
Projected ACC champion

No. 4 Boise State
Projected Mountain West champion

Games in the first round

No. 12 Arizona State at
No. 5 Ohio State
The winner will play No. 4 Boise State

No. 9 Tennessee at
No. 8 Georgia
The winner plays No. 1 Oregon

No. 11 Indiana at
No. 6 Penn State
Winner plays No. 3 Miami

No. 10 SMU at
No. 7 Notre Dame
The winner plays No. 2 Texas

First team out: Clemson

Second team out: Alabama

When: Sat 30 November
Where: Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Time: 14:30 Central
TV: ABC Network

More… Alabama vs. Auburn: Iron Bowl history, scores, notable plays

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Game odds are updated regularly and may change.

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