Remember last year, when I was beating the drum for a 16-team College Football Playoff? Let’s do it again.
If you need a refresher, take a look at last week’s version. But the short version is this: In my playoff scenario, all ten conference champions automatically make the tournament. The field is then rounded out with six at-large teams. Independent schools would be eligible to make the field as an at-large selection.
With that outta of the way, what would the bracket currently look like under this system? This.
# 16 Northern Illinois (MAC) at # 1 Georgia (SEC)
# 9 Notre Dame (at-large) at #8 Oklahoma (Big 12)
# 13 Texas-San Antonio (CUSA) at # 4 Ohio State (Big 10)
# 12 San Diego State (MWC) at # 5 Cincinnati (at-large)
# 14 Houston (AAC) at # 3 Oregon (Pac-12)
# 11 Wake Forest (ACC) at # 6 Michigan (at-large)
# 10 Oklahoma State (at-large) at # 7 Michigan State (at-large)
# 15 Louisiana (Sun Belt) at #2 Alabama (at-large)
The only real change in composition this week is San Diego State replacing Fresno State as the Mountain West leader. Wake Forest remained the undefeated ACC leader despite losing to conference rival North Carolina thanks to a bizarre scheduling quirk where they scheduled a non-conference game against each other due to the the ACC’s scheduling rules. But Wake gets a game that very much counts against N.C. State this weekend.
The Big 10 logjam of Ohio State, Michigan, and Michigan State isn’t going to sort itself out until Ohio State is done playing both teams. If Ohio State runs that table, it would open up more spots in this hypothetical playoff for other 1- or 2-loss teams.
The Cincinnati/Houston deal won’t fix itself until Cincinnati has finally played as many conference games as Houston. They wouldn’t play each other until the AAC title game, presumably in Cincinnati.