History says 12-team College Football Playoff bracket will be crazier than we imagine

One side effect of college football’s seemingly interminable offseason is that nine months spent yapping with no games to confirm or deny the talking points tends to lead to some rigid groupthink.

But the numbers tell us our groupthink will be wrong. With the dawn of the 12-team College Football Playoff upon us, we need to be a lot more creative with our guesses for how the first bracket actually will look.

Fortunately, Ralph Russo, the keeper of The Associated Press poll, has crunched the numbers for us and created a handy formula to guide that guessing. And after one spin through the preseason AP poll that was released Monday, I can confirm that it’s a lot more fun and a lot more random than the “We all think these teams will be good” logic that has guided previous bracket projections.

Ralph explains it all in this story, which compares the preseason AP poll to the final CFP selection committee ranking for each of the past 10 seasons. Using that data, he determined the best way to guess the bracket is like this:

• Choose four of the five teams ranked No. 1-5.
• Choose two of the five teams ranked No. 6-10.
• Choose two of the 10 teams ranked No. 11-20.
• Choose one of the five teams ranked No. 21-25.
• Choose three unranked teams.

These choices have to conform to the CFP’s selection rules, so at least five conferences must be represented because five conference champs receive automatic bids. Also, remember that the seeding rules require that conference champs receive the top four seeds and first-round byes.

Using these requirements, I filled out a bracket.

If you’ve been following along all offseason, you know I believe all five teams in the AP poll’s top five — Georgia, Ohio State, Oregon, Texas and Alabama — will make the CFP. But history says at least one won’t. So I had to eliminate one. 

I chose Texas, which did lose a lot from a team that won the Big 12 and made the four-team CFP last year. This isn’t a Texas-can’t-hang-in-the-SEC take. I had to eliminate one, and the Longhorns drew the short straw.

To reduce confusion in my own mind — and because we’re just guessing here — I kept the rankings the same and just moved Alabama up one. So here’s how those teams would be seeded in the playoff bracket.

1. Georgia (SEC champ)
2. Ohio State (Big Ten champ)
5. Oregon (at-large)
6. Alabama (at-large)

It was a little easier to choose two from No. 6-10 even though I put four of these teams in my original projected bracket this spring. No. 7 Notre Dame might need to go 11-1 against this schedule to make the CFP, so a 10-2 season with the Fighting Irish on the outside looking in seems quite possible. If No. 8 Penn State’s offense doesn’t get better, the Nittany Lions could easily find themselves left out of the bracket. No. 9 Michigan has a new coach and an overhauled offense with a QB competition that hasn’t been decided, so it’s entirely possible the Wolverines don’t make the cut.

That leaves No. 6 Ole Miss, which returned a ton of skill position talent and beefed up on both sides of the line of scrimmage in the transfer portal. It also leaves No. 10 Florida State, which still looks like the best program in the ACC. So let’s load those two into the playoff bracket.

3. Florida State (ACC champ)
7. Ole Miss (at-large)

Choosing two from the next 10 proved trickier. The AP voters clearly think the Big 12 champ is coming from this group. They’ve got Utah at 12, Oklahoma State at 17 and Kansas State at 18. And it’s quite possible one of these wins the league. 

But I have to choose three unranked teams to make the bracket, and I can make a compelling case for six other potential champs in a league that feels more densely packed than the others. So I’m going to save my Big 12 champ for the unranked group.

I chose No. 15 Tennessee because I had the Volunteers in my original bracket projection. The other choice was trickier. Would I predict a resurgent Clemson grabbing an at-large? Or is this the year Miami is back?

I chose another option, in part to help retcon a previous choice. If Texas didn’t make it, how did that happen? Almost any plausible explanation would include a second consecutive loss to Oklahoma. And if the Sooners went 10-2 or better against a loaded schedule, they’d be in. So I chose Oklahoma.

No. 8 Tennessee
No. 9 Oklahoma

(Yes, this would create a rematch. Tennessee plays Oklahoma in Norman in September. This would send the Sooners to Knoxville in December.)

For my one selection between 21 and 25, I went with a potential sleeper that we’ve been pointing out for months because of the unevenness of the new Big Ten schedules. If Iowa’s offense is remotely functional, the Hawkeyes could go 10-2 or 11-1 and might get into the Big Ten title game. So I slotted Iowa into the final ranked spot.

No. 10 Iowa

That left three unranked selections. I still needed a Big 12 champ, a Group of 5 conference champ and one more at-large.

For the other at-large, I was boxed out of most of the Big Ten and SEC contenders because they’re ranked in the preseason poll. Auburn was a tantalizing choice, though. Instead, I decided the Big 12 would get two teams into the first 12-team CFP.

Let’s say K.J. Jefferson turns out to be the create-a-quarterback of Gus Malzahn’s dreams and UCF wins the Big 12. Now let’s retcon another previous choice and say one of the reasons Penn State didn’t make the CFP is because the Nittany Lions lost at West Virginia in week one. UCF — with losses to Florida in Gainesville and West Virginia in Morgantown — beats the Mountaineers in the rematch. West Virginia, with a second loss either at Oklahoma State or at Arizona, slides into the final at-large spot.

I have no idea who should get that Group of 5 spot. There are so many variables. I chose Appalachian State because if the Mountaineers make it, it probably means they handed Liberty it’s only loss and (maybe) beat Clemson before winning the Sun Belt. 

4. UCF
11. West Virginia
12. Appalachian State

So here’s how that bracket would look:

No. 12 Appalachian State at No. 5 Oregon 
Winner plays No. 4 UCF in the Fiesta Bowl

No. 11 West Virginia at No. 6 Alabama (Call it the RichRod Bowl if you must)
Winner plays No. 3 Florida State in the Peach Bowl

No. 10 Iowa at No. 7 Ole Miss
Winner plays No. 2 Ohio State in the Rose Bowl

No. 9 Oklahoma at No. 8 Tennessee
Winner plays No. 1 Georgia in the Sugar Bowl

The bracket gets a lot crazier when you remember that the season always surprises us. So try to make your own using Ralph’s rules, and let your imagination run wild.