The College Football Playoff may be expanding to 12 teams this season, but there will be plenty of scrutiny over who gets in, who gets left out, and where teams are seeded by the selection committee. Penn State’s situation, for instance, could go a number of different ways after losing in the Big Ten championship game to Oregon. Trying to figure out how the committee operates on a week-to-week basis is a mighty challenge, and you never know exactly how they will handle certain situations until they reveal their updated rankings.
The selection committee will make its final decisions on Sunday with the final rankings and seeding for this year’s College Football Playoff. Penn State will be in the field, but where and who will they be playing?
Here is a guess as to how the playoff will be seeded.
The Top 4 Seeds
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Oregon (Big Ten champion)
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Georgia (SEC champion)
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Boise State (Mountain West Conference champion)
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Arizona State (Big 12 champion)
This is the easy part to figure out, starting with the top two seeds. Oregon will be the top seed after completing a 13-0 season with the Big Ten championship. They are the only undefeated team in the field and are a lock to be the top team going into the playoff. Georgia, as SEC champion, will be the easy pick for the second overall seed after taking down no. 2 Texas in Atlanta on Saturday.
I do believe Boise State will hold off the surging Big 12 champion Arizona State Sun Devils for the third seed, but I would not argue if you wanted to put Arizona State ahead of the Mountain West Conference champion.
First-round matchups
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5. Texas vs. 12. Clemson (ACC champion)
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6. Penn State 11. SMU
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7. Notre Dame vs. 10. Indiana
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8. Ohio State vs. 9. Tennessee
I have had lingering doubts about whether I trust the selection committee to keep SMU in the playoff if they lost the ACC championship game. I hesitated to keep them in my final projection because of where the committee put Alabama in their rankings last week. But I think the way SMU stormed back and was clipped by a ridiculous last-second field goal by Clemson for the ACC title may help the cause for the Mustangs. But if there is one team I think I’ll be most wrong about here, it will be SMU.
Texas will take the fifth seed after losing in the SEC title game, and I think a matchup with Clemson is the matchup to look forward to. Or, if the committee rewards Clemson for the head-to-head conference title victory, pairing Texas with SMU and sending Clemson to Happy Valley could work out.
I think Penn State will manage to stay just ahead of Notre Dame for the sixth seed, but I can see a scenario where the committee flips these two. I’ll take Penn State’s two losses to Oregon and Ohio State over Notre Dame’s loss to Northern Illinois though.
The matchup I am most confident in is the Ohio State-Tennessee matchup, and I do think the Buckeyes manage to get that one at home.
We’ll find out the bracket once and for all Sunday afternoon to see how accurate, or how off base, this projection ends up being.
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