Morning Distribution for Tuesday, September 27, 2022

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Morning Distribution]( Tuesday, September 27, 2022 Your daily briefing from FiveThirtyEight --------------------------------------------------------------- The Morning Story [Brian Branch of the Alabama Crimson Tide returns a punt for a touchdown]( [Our College Football Playoff Forecast Is Back — And So Are The Usual Contenders]( By [Josh Planos]( Oddsmakers predicted the 2022 college football season would be [more top-heavy than usual]( and so far the projection has proven prescient. In 2021, two of the top four teams in the AP preseason poll had already suffered losses by Week 3. In 2022, the [preseason’s top four teams]( remain undefeated at the season’s quarter turn, with Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and Ohio State bulldozing opponents by 32.5 points per game. That’s the second-best combined margin for the preseason top four through the first four games of any season since 2000. So [nobody should be surprised]( that familiar faces are high up in the postseason probabilities, either. To appraise each team’s odds of punching a playoff ticket, FiveThirtyEight is relaunching [our College Football Playoff forecast]( for 2022 — and Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and Ohio State each have at least a 35 percent chance of qualifying for the playoff, with the Bulldogs (54 percent), Crimson Tide (53 percent) and Buckeyes (48 percent) netting about coin-flip odds. If that holds, it would be the second time in the past three seasons without a newcomer in the playoff, and the ninth time in 10 seasons that the playoff didn’t include a team from outside the Power Five conferences. How we’re forecasting the College Football Playoff All Football Bowl Subdivision teams with at least a 1 percent chance of winning the 2022 national championship according to the FiveThirtyEight model [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: Why Biden’s Unpopularity Doesn’t Seem To Be Tanking Democrats]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.