Oregon, Georgia, Boise and Arizona State all get first round byes
After months of building toward it, Selection Sunday has arrived.
The CFP’s expanded 12-team bracket was revealed today on ESPN and now the field is officially set.
THE BRACKET IS SET ✍️
Who are you taking to win the #CFBPlayoff? pic.twitter.com/9BDWwesEVL
— ESPN (@espn) December 8, 2024
Oregon is the No. 1 overall seed after the Ducks won the B1G Championship last night. Georgia, the SEC champ, is the 2-seed, while Boise State, champs of the Mountain West, is No. 3 and Arizona State is No. 4 as the Big 12 champ. Those four teams will have first round byes and advance to the quarterfinal round which will be held at traditional bowl sites.
Oregon is headed to the Rose Bowl, Georgia to the Sugar, Boise State to the Fiesta, and Arizona State will go to the Peach. The Fiesta Bowl will standalone on New Year’s Eve, while the Peach/Rose/Sugar will be a triple header on New Year’s Day.
The semifinals will be held at the Orange (Thursday January 9, 7:30 P.M.) and Cotton Bowl (Friday January 10, 7:30 P.M).
But before we can get to these quarterfinal games, we’ll have to have opening round games that will be played on campus. Those games ought to be awesome as we’ll have:
- #10 Indiana vs. #7 Notre Dame, Friday December 20, 7:00 P.M., ABC
- #11 SMU vs. #6 Penn State, Saturday December 21, 11:00 A.M., TNT
- #12 Clemson vs. #5 Texas, Saturday December 21, 3:00 P.M., TNT
- #9 Tennessee vs. #8 Ohio State, Saturday December 21, 7:00 P.M., ABC
You might have noticed that Alabama is not in the playoff picture. They were the first team out, as the committee opted to keep SMU in the field despite losing a heartbreaker to Clemson in last night’s ACC Championship Game. There’s been a lot of hemming and hawing over on Bama’s side of the Internet that “WELL MAYBE WE JUST WON’T PLAY NO MORE TOUGH NON-CONFERENCE GAMES!!!!!” which is all well and good, but I’ll remind you that Alabama lost three (3) conference games, two of which came to a pair of 6-6 teams, so I’m not sure what kind of point they’re trying to make. Maybe Alabama should consider not losing to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma next time?
So anyway, who all are you rooting for? Personally, I’d like to see Indiana, Boise, SMU or Arizona State win this whole thing.