College Football Playoff 2015: How would an eight-team format play out?

If the College Football Playoff went to eight teams in 2015, here is what the projected Playoff bracket would look like using all New Year’s Six bowls.

The College Football Playoff is in its second season as the deciding factor for the NCAA Division I Football Champion. This year the No. 1 Clemson Tigers will host the No. 4 Oklahoma Sooners in Miami for the Orange Bowl in the a National Semifinal Game. The other National Semifinal will be between the No. 2 Alabama Crimson Tide and the No. 3 Michigan State Spartans in Dallas for the Cotton Bowl.

While all four teams in this year’s College Football Playoff were their respective conference’s outright champion, suppose that the Playoff bracket was hypothetically expanded to eight teams. What would that version of the College Football Playoff look like? Who would end up winning the 2015 National Championship if the Playoff went to a three-week slate of games?

In this exercise, let’s say that the top eight teams in the country would all make the eight-team Playoff. All four National Quarterfinals and both National Semifinals would constitute the New Years’ Six bowl games (Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Peach, Rose, Sugar) and the National Championship Game would occur at a rotation location, this year being at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

Would bringing in an additional four teams into the College Football Playoff mix drastically alter the new era of Division I College Football? Could a seven or eight-seed end up winning it all?

Here’s what could have happened if the 2015 College Football Playoff included four more teams (Iowa Hawkeyes, Stanford Cardinal, Ohio State Buckeyes, and Notre Dame Fighting Irish).

Next: No. 1 Clemson vs. No. 8 Notre Dame