Four teams just may not be enough. Here is what a projected 8-team College Football Playoff bracket would look like after Week 8 of the 2018 NCAA season.
With Week 8 of the 2018 college football season in the books, the College Football Playoff picture is getting clearer. Last week, as many as 20 teams still had a shot at making the Playoff. Now, that number has dipped into the low teens.
While last week saw four top-10 teams lose in upsets, only the No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes succumbed to defeat this week. Ohio State never got it together offensively on the road against the Purdue Boilermakers, falling 35-13 in West Lafayette.
With Ohio State being what was a clear-cut top-four team last week, surely the Playoff picture has been impacted by this. Who will be the top-four and the first two out when the initial rankings drop? What if hypothetically we expanded it to eight teams? What could that look like?
Well, here is what an 8-team College Football Playoff would look like if the season ended today. For the sake of simplicity, we’re going to use all the New Year’s Six bowls as the national quarter and semifinals.
No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide (8-0) vs. No. 8 Oklahoma Sooners (6-1) [Peach Bowl]
The Alabama Crimson Tide would be the No. 1 seed as the SEC Champion and would have its pick of national quarterfinals locations. Since Nick Saban has done so much winning in Atlanta over the years, Alabama would love nothing more than to face the No. 8 seed in the Peach Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
The Crimson Tide would be matched up with an at-large team out of the Big 12 in the No. 8 Oklahoma Sooners. Oklahoma’s only loss up to this point is to the arch rival Texas Longhorns. With Ohio State losing to a three-loss team on the road in Purdue, the Sooners edge out Ohio State for the last team in for this eight-team Playoff hypothetical.
No. 2 Clemson Tigers (7-0) vs. No. 7 Georgia Bulldogs (6-1) [Sugar Bowl]
The Clemson Tigers would be the No. 2 seed as the ACC Champion. While Dabo Swinney’s bunch would have preferred to play at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, the Tigers will settle for hosting the No. 7 seed at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans in the Sugar Bowl.
Meeting Clemson in The Big Easy would be the No. 7 Georgia Bulldogs. These two teams have a respectable rivalry historically, as they are less than 100 miles apart in the Southeastern region of the country. Georgia’s only loss was on the road an elite SEC team in LSU. Georgia’s loss is just slightly better than Oklahoma’s to Texas to get that No. 7 spot.
No. 3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (7-0) vs. No. 6 Texas Longhorns (6-1) [Rose Bowl]
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish become the first independent program to reach the College Football Playoff. They would have made it anyway in the current four-team format. In this eight-team hypothetical, they would be the No. 3 seed. One would think that they would pick the Rose Bowl as their quarterfinal destination strictly for optics. Who wouldn’t want to see Notre Dame playing in the Rose Bowl?
Taking on Notre Dame as the No. 6 seed would be the Big 12 Champion Texas. The Longhorns suffered a rough neutral-site loss in Week 1 to the Big Ten’s Maryland Terrapins at FedEx Field in Landover. Their win over Oklahoma is better than anything that Georgia has to date and would edge the Dawgs out to play the Golden Domers in Pasadena for the quarterfinals.
No. 4 LSU Tigers (7-1). vs. No. 5 Michigan Wolverines (7-1) [Fiesta Bowl]
Coming in at No. 4 would be LSU as an SEC at-large team. LSU’s loss on the road to the cross-divisional rival Florida Gators isn’t all that bad, as Florida is a top-15 team already. The Tigers’ wins over Georgia, the Miami Hurricanes and the Mississippi State Bulldogs makes their early season resume all the more impressive.
Taking on the Bayou Bengals in the last available quarterfinals spot at newly christened State Farm Stadium in Glendale in the Fiesta Bowl would be the Big Ten Champion Michigan Wolverines. Michigan’s only loss was a narrow one in Week 1 to Notre Dame. The Wolverines have beaten two ranked teams in the last two weeks in the Wisconsin Badgers and the Michigan State Spartans to crack the new top-five.
So obviously the outcomes of these quarterfinals would yield who gets to play in the national semifinals: the Cotton Bowl and the Orange Bowl. Winning teams that would opt to play in the Cotton Bowl at AT&T Stadium in Arlington would be LSU, Texas and possibly Notre Dame.
Next: 50 best college football programs of all time
Winning teams that would opt to play in the Orange Bowl at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens would be Alabama, Clemson and likely Michigan. Both Georgia and Oklahoma would not get to choose where they would play the national semifinal should they advance since they would be the lower seed no matter what. The National Championship would be at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.