The 12-team College Football Playoff bracket offers an imperfect new way to pick a national champion
Over the decades, no sport has had more difficulty determining its national champion than major college football.
Spoiler alert: The new, expanded 12-team playoff bracket that will be announced Sunday is not the perfect solution.
Just hours before the College Football Playoff pairings are revealed, uncertainty reigned after a frantic end to the conference championship weekend. The 13-person selection committee that selects the field had some issues to sort out.
Biggest: Will they pick Alabama or SMU for the final spot?
Alabama (9-3) is a three-loss Southeastern Conference team that was ranked 11th by the CFP last week, didn’t play this week and was considered a last-place team. SMU (11-2) entered the week ranked 8th in the CFP, but missed its chance at an automatic bid by losing the Atlantic Coast Conference title game thriller on Saturday evening, 34-31 at Clemson. The Mustangs have a weaker schedule than the Crimson Tide but only two losses.
SMU rallied by 21 points behind to tie the game, only to see Clemson’s kicker make a 56-yard field goal with no time left.
“I don’t know what to say,” Mustangs coach Rhett Lashley said. “They don’t care what I say. But we should be there, and they know we should be there, so we’ll see what happens.
Count on one thing, no matter what the terrain looks like: Upset coaches, upset athletic directors and upset fans.
If it were that simple the committee would rank the top 12 teams and place them in the group. This is not the case.
The four highest-ranked conference champions earn a bye to the quarterfinals, which will take place in bowl games across the country on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1. Oregon (Big Ten)Georgia (SEC), Boise State (Mountain West) and Arizona State (Big 12).
The remaining eight teams will play first-round games Dec. 20-21 on the campus of the top-ranked team. They will be placed in parentheses in order of classification with one exception. Any of the top five conference champions not ranked in the top 12 participate in the tournament. In this case, that means Clemson (CFP No. 17 last week) depends on whether or not it makes the top 12.
Other teams expected to make the final eight are Notre Dame, Texas, Penn State, Ohio State, Tennessee and Indiana.
That 12th team will likely be Alabama or SMU.
The winners of the quarterfinals advance to the semifinals at the Orange and Cotton Bowls on January 9-10. The national title game is Jan. 20 in Atlanta.
Before the bracket is even revealed, the favorite is Oregon, at 13-4, according to BetMGM Sportsbook. The Ducks (13-0) are the only undefeated team in the country.
But even without the 12-team playoffs, this has been a particularly difficult season to handicap.
There was a major conference realignment (each of the Power Four title games included a newly arrived team – Texas to the SEC, Oregon to the Big Ten, SMU to the ACC, Arizona State in the Big 12), as well as the growing influence of transfer portal And the ability of players to earn moneyall of which have disrupted the workforce and uprooted the “status quo” in sport.
That led to upsets almost every week this season, making the selection process for the 12-team playoffs even more difficult as it expanded from the four-team format it launched in January 2015.
Injury to Georgia quarterback Carson Beck in the SEC title game could throw another wrench into things, but it’s hard to rule out the Bulldogs. Coach Kirby Smart’s program is just one season away from its second straight title.
“We’re beat, we’re tired, we’re mentally tired,” Smart said. “But I don’t know if I’ve ever had a mentally tougher team. They keep coming, keep coming. They never say die.
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