Outside of Alabama having their traditional dominance, this year’s college football season has been far from predictable near the top of the rankings.

There are four other schools that have at least two College Football Playoff appearances. Ohio State and Clemson have lost games, and Notre Dame and Oklahoma have had some shaky results as well. So the other three spots in this season’s College Football Playoffs appear to be up for grabs.

Sports Betting in Big Ten Country

There is big news coming to the upcoming 2022-23 Big Ten football season (and NFL season). Ohio online sports betting and Maryland sports betting are on the way.

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FiveThirtyEight is relaunching their College Football Playoff forecast. The model uses ESPN’s Football Power Index1 to simulate the rest of the schedule, tracking how often each team is expected to win each game. The algorithm also takes into consideration the committee, and how they have reacted in the past.

Five teams currently have at least a 25 percent chance of making the playoff: Alabama (55 percent), Georgia (54 percent), Oklahoma (39 percent), Oregon (32 percent) and Notre Dame (25 percent). Right behind them there are eight more teams with at least a 10 percent chance, translating to there being 13 teams sitting between 10 and 55 percent playoff odds right now.

Here’s every Big Ten team with more than 5 percent chance of making the playoff, per FiveThirtyEight:

  • Iowa: 18 percent
  • Michigan: 17 percent
  • Ohio State: 15 percent
  • Penn State: 14 percent
  • Michigan State: 10 percent

Of course, as has been nearly every week so far this season, that’s all subject to change come next Monday.