The College Football Playoff has been around long enough to develop tendencies by the selection committee. Now Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight has adjusted his mathematical formula to factor in certain variables, such as how Notre Dame is treated. Silver tweeted that the committee “hearts” the Fighting Irish.

Through Week 3, Silver lists the top four teams for the CFP as Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma and Ohio State. Georgia, Notre Dame, LSU, Wisconsin, Penn State and Florida round out the top 10.

“Basically, our model gives credit for winning conference championships, which the selection committee says it values. But Notre Dame (and other independents) can’t win conference championships, and empirically, it doesn’t seem to care! So now there’s a fix for that…,” Silver wrote. “Notre Dame & other indies now get credit for essentially a probabilistic conference championship based on how likely they would have been to win a conference championship if they were in a conference, given their W-L record. This better reflects the committee’s actual behavior.”

One of the more interesting features of Silver’s web site is the ability to change the forecast based on wins or losses by clicking on individual teams and results.

Interestingly, Silver has Alabama’s chances of winning the SEC at 38 percent, while Georgia’s is 26 percent.