College Football Playoff 2019: 16-team bracket simulation

The College Football Playoff field sits at four teams currently but if it were expanded to 16 teams, how would the tournament play out?

Unlike has been the case in most years, it’s hard to argue with the four teams selected to play in the College Football Playoff after the 2019 season. With three undefeated conference champions — the LSU Tigers, Ohio State Buckeyes and Clemson Tigers, in order — and then a one-loss Big 12 Champion in the Oklahoma Sooners, it’s safe to say that no team has a better claim than any of those four teams given their body of work.

Whenever the College Football Playoff comes around, however, the talk of expanding the field beyond just four teams comes about. The natural progression if the NCAA were to add more teams to the playoff would be going to eight teams, likely with some designation for Power 5 conference champions, the best Group of 5 team and two at-large teams.

There are arguments for and against expanding the field that make sense. In the case of the latter, especially in a year like the 2019 season, you could make the argument that none of the other teams that would make a larger CFP field are deserving of competing for the National Championship at this point. But then again, who doesn’t want to see more football between the best teams in the country.

But if the field were to expand to eight teams eventually, we would then get talk of expanding the College Football Playoff once again, moving it to 16 teams. Logistically, that could still work. You could give the 16 teams two weeks off after the conference championship games and then have a week-by-week tournament with the semifinals and National Championship being played at the same time.

So maybe we’re jumping the gun here, but let’s look at how that potential future could look should the field not just expand to eight teams but rather 16. Using the top 16 teams in the final College Football Playoff rankings, this is how a 16-team bracket would play out.