🐎 SMU in, Bama out CFP
🏈 Bowl game announcements
DIII women's soccer title game
🤯 No. 1 Kansas MBB loses second-straight game
The College Football Playoff bracket is here. The 12-team bracket was announced on Sunday, Dec. 8. The official 12-team College Football Playoff field and final top 25 rankings were announced Dec. 8.
Oregon is the No. 1 seed, with Georgia, Boise State and Arizona State also getting byes. Below is the bracket, final seeding and complete playoff schedule.
This bracket uses the committee’s final top 25 rankings on Sunday, Dec. 8. It’s important to note that the top 25 ranking does not always match the seed in the playoff, as the four highest-ranked conference champions receive the top four seeds and byes, no matter where those four teams rank in the top 25. The fifth-highest-ranked conference champion is also in automatically, though that team will not get a bye.
You can see how those numbers — the seed and the CFP ranking — differ below. The four teams with byes are in bold:
Boise State, which won the Mountain West Conference championship and has lost to only top-ranked Oregon, is the third-highest-ranked conference champion and thus received a bye into the quarterfinals despite ranking No. 9. Though Arizona State is ranked only No. 12, the Sun Devils are the fourth-highest ranked conference champion — over ACC champ Clemson (No. 16) — and earned the No. 4 seed and the final first-round bye.
With the four highest-ranked conference champions receiving the top four seeds and thus byes, the remaining eight teams in the bracket meet in the first round. Here are those games, played a campus sites on Dec. 20 or Dec. 21:
All times Eastern
There is no re-seeding once the official bracket is revealed on Sunday, Dec. 8.
The four quarterfinal games are not played at the campus sites. Instead, these four games — scheduled on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 — will be played at the Fiesta Bowl, Rose Bowl, Peach Bowl and Sugar Bowl. The four highest-ranked conference champions will be assigned one of these bowls in consideration of historic bowl relationships as well as seeding.
The four quarterfinal winners will then meet in the semifinals at either the Orange Bowl or the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 9 and Jan. 10. If the seeds hold, that means (1) would meet (4) and (2) would play (3). The two semifinal winners will then play on Jan. 20 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta for the national championship.
