The latter half of the projected College Football Playoff bracket experienced a major shakeup after the chaos of Week 13. Three teams featured in the previous bracket cycled out of the field after getting upset to bring in a new round of contenders.
Ole Miss fell to Florida and Alabama lost a stunner against Oklahoma to knock both out of the field, but they remain in the top 15 of the College Football Playoff Rankings. Instead, the losses cleared the way for No. 9 SMU to join and No. 8 Tennessee to climb back into the field. No. 5 seed Ohio State, No. 6 seed Penn State, No. 7 seed Notre Dame and No. 8 seed Georgia are projected to host first-round matchups. Indiana also stayed in the field as the 11-seed following a loss to Ohio State.
At the top, the first-round byes remained unchanged after Oregon, Texas, Miami and Boise State all won. However, Arizona State surpassed BYU as the projected 12-seed after beating the Cougars 28-23 on their home field last weekend. Clemson moved into the position of first team out after jumping ahead of every three-loss SEC team in the rankings.
This bracket is a projection heading into Week 14. None of the byes will formally be earned until a team wins a conference championship. Here is a look at how the College Football Playoff bracket looks after the fourth CFP Rankings release.
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ACC sitting pretty
For most of the season, the ACC has been fighting to get a second team into the CFP. Thanks to an unbalanced schedule that featured its top three teams avoiding each other, the league suddenly has three playoff contenders.
No. 6 Miami and No. 9 SMU are now firmly in the field and should be able to survive an ACC Championship Game loss. No. 12 Clemson exploded up the charts and is suddenly the first team out of the field. If the Tigers beat No. 15 South Carolina this week, they will almost certainly move up. No conference has been a bigger beneficiary of the SEC’s collapse than the ACC.
Big 12 in trouble
While the ACC’s two-loss team (Clemson) got plenty of credit, the Big 12’s did not. In fact, 9-2 Big 12 teams Iowa State and BYU both sit behind AAC favorite Tulane heading into the final stretch of the season. Five Big 12 teams are ranked, but No. 16 Arizona State is the highest in the field.
Even with a Big 12 Championship Game victory, the league seems unlikely to catch Boise State for a first-round bye. However, that’s the least of the conference’s worries. In fact, if Tulane wins out, the Green Wave will have a serious case to jump ahead of the Big 12 champion. If that happens, the Big 12 could get left out of the field completely. Needless to say, that would be a nightmare scenario for the conference in the first year post-realignment.
Committee’s love of Penn State is baffling
Most of the time when a team is ranked substantially higher than expectations, there’s a reasonable explanation. Sometimes the analytics love a team or they have an especially positive win. None of that provides much explanation for Penn State, which ranked No. 4 in the most recent CFP Rankings. The Nittany Lions don’t rate especially well in advanced metrics, sitting between Tennessee and Indiana in the SP+ ratings. Their only ranked win came against No. 23 Illinois. Penn State’s most recent game was a 26-25 squeaker against a middling Minnesota squad. And yet, the Nittany Lions are still on track to host a College Football Playoff game at Beaver Stadium. It’s confounding.
