Bracketology — Projecting the 2022 March Madness men’s field

Now less than two weeks away from the NFL draft, a few things are coming into focus. After that, evaluations tend to be all over the place, and the last 12 selections of the first round in particular could be filled with some twists and turns and players being called who weren’t found on a lot of mock drafts. It’s still a little early in terms of being able to sort out the best information possible about which teams are truly leaning which way, but you do continue to hear the same names mentioned as the best of the best in this draft: Saquon Barkley, Quenton Nelson, Bradley Chubb, Minkah Fitzpatrick and Denzel Ward. The consensus I get from the evaluators I speak with is that those five are the best players in this draft overall, and if not for all of the extreme demand for passers, that is how picks 1-5 would likely play out in some order.

For as long as the College Football Playoff has existed – so a total of four seasons – the four teams chosen by the selection committee and why create an annual controversy among programs and their fan bases. Under its current format, it seems like there will always be snubs, teams with questionable credentials included and, especially recently, teams that feel they aren’t given a fair shot. The network – which has the playoff and national championship game broadcasting rights through the 2025-26 season – shared the results of its new Playoff Predictor formula, which will attempt to forecast each team’s chance of making the cut before and throughout the season. ESPN’s analytics is basing its predictions on strength of record, number of losses, conference championships, independent status ( re: Notre Dame) and the Football Power Index (FPI) – how well a team is playing based on expectations.