Imagining what a 64-team 2021 College Football Playoff would look like

Elite 8

This is where the fun truly begins. Do any of these Elite Eight teams surprise you?

South Region

• No. 1 Alabama 45, No. 3 North Carolina 14

West Region

• No. 2 Texas A&M 27, No. 1 Notre Dame 24

East Region

• No. 1 Clemson 42, No. 6 Liberty 21

Midwest Region

• No. 1 Ohio State 41, No. 2 Oklahoma 30

Final Four

• No. 1 Alabama 49, No. 2 Texas A&M 27
• No. 1 Ohio State 49, No. 1 Clemson 24

Title Game

• No. 1 Alabama 52, No. 1 Ohio State 24

Analysis

In this iteration of the 64-team college football playoff, an FCS team scored a major first-round upset (James Madison against Indiana) and several major conference dark horse teams advanced farther than expected (West Virginia and Stanford among them).

Ultimately, Texas A&M proved on the field that they were worthy of a Final Four spot by defeating Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish were this year’s blue-blood program to get a relatively easy path to the Elite 8 after several earlier upsets left them playing double-digit seeds. (Cue the complaints and the national Notre Dame hate here.)

North Dakota State and other FCS programs got the chance to get on the football field — surely a great leap of imagination after the (mostly) non-existent 2020 fall season for many of these schools that resumes this spring. The predicted conference title winners were the ones to get the automatic conference bid, with an at-large bid thrown to Northern Iowa for good measure.

The SEC and the ACC look to be the conferences in the best shape after this year’s playoff, especially if you’re counting Notre Dame as an ACC team for 2020.

In the end, though, Alabama still took the grand prize home after defeating Ohio State. But hey, at least we get to see additional on-field action in this bracket, right?