SMQ: What would a 12-team College Football Playoff look like in 2021?
By Zach Bigalke
How the College Football Playoff would rank conference champions
Working from the original proposal, the first task is assessing the six best champions from the 10 FBS conferences. After Saturday’s games wrapped up, we can now determine those six teams. Here is how the College Football Playoff selection committee will likely rank the conference winners:
- Alabama (12-1 SEC champion)
- Michigan (12-1 Big Ten champion)
- Cincinnati (13-0 AAC champion)
- Baylor (11-2 Big 12 champion)
- Utah (10-3 Pac-12 champion)
- Pittsburgh (11-2 ACC champion)
- Louisiana (12-1 Sun Belt champion)
- UTSA (12-1 C-USA champion)
- Utah State (10-3 MWC champion)
- Northern Illinois (9-4 MAC champion)
Alabama’s win over previously unbeaten Georgia is the catalyst for the committee to vault the Crimson Tide to the top seed. In a year where all but one team has a blemish, Nick Saban’s team is on track to defend their 2020-2021 title.
As the only other Power Five champ with one loss, Michigan is the obvious choice for No. 2 in conference champion seeding. They might get a bit of a challenge from Cincinnati, the last undefeated team standing after the regular season, but the smart money is on the committee privileging the Wolverines over the Bearcats. That leaves Baylor at No. 4, edging out the other Power Five champions to secure the bye.
There might be some argument about the order between the winners of the Pac-12 and ACC. The guess here is that the committee favors Utah after they defeated a higher-ranked team in their title game.
Had San Diego State defeated Utah State in the Mountain West championship game, there was also a possibility that the Aztecs could have sneaked into the No. 6 slot. Instead, every Power Five champion would make it through just as they would in most seasons.
In this system, Alabama, Michigan, Cincinnati, and Baylor would receive the four byes to the quarterfinals. Utah and Pittsburgh would land home games in the opening round.