After Saturday, 24 of the teams in my top 25 — your top 25, their top 25 — feel capable of making the College Football Playoff in the current 12-team format. Double the size of the playoff field, and all of them would fit nicely in this hypothetical 24-team CFP projection I’ve put before you here. For me, this hypothetical playoff format is as close as we’ve come to something like the appearance of democratically selecting a national champion.
And as the sport rapidly races to drop the hypothetical part of a 24-team picture, this format for determining the field is my best approximation of where we as a sport could be this time next year. This format works. It resembles many high school football playoffs, is closer to the FCS playoffs and gives many similar feelings to the NCAA basketball tournaments.
More teams, more debates, more games with higher stakes. Could a three-loss squad still make it? Could good losses or bad wins have a greater impact now?
Where would strength of schedules and style points fit in? Could the potential field contenders grow to 30 teams, 40 teams, 50 teams? Under this format, my selection criteria is really quite simple: Yes, the best teams will likely still rise to the top.
But the fireworks and upsets likely to impact this format give it the same opportunity to fill us with joy, with excitement, with HOLY SMOKES moments — like Auburn knocking off No. 1 Georgia on the road, a top-10 Texas losing to Florida at home and BYU banging on Notre Dame’s golden dome with a Bear (Bachmeier) at quarterback. As the College Football Playoff barrels toward a future 24-team field, here's my hypothetical bracket, based on the 2026 season, my weekly top 25 and my criteria outlined above.
HYPOTHETICAL 24-TEAM FIELD IN 2026 Teams in the hunt: AUTOMATIC QUALIFIERS: POWER FOUR CHAMPS 1. Miami, ACC champion2. Ohio State, Big Ten champion3.
Georgia, SEC champion4. BYU, Big 12 champion24. James Madison, highest-ranked G6 team Among the Power Four automatic qualifiers, Ohio State, remarkably, is the program I think is least likely to win the national championship because it’s the only one with its starting quarterback, Julian Sayin, rocking a sling on his throwing arm before Halloween.
What we know about Luke Fahey, the Buckeyes' backup quarterback, and his ability to lead the team could fit neatly into a Wordle puzzle: He won. Against Indiana, in relief, Fahey looked shaky, but the defense played outstandingly. Yes, Sayin could be back in time for the postseason, and the Buckeyes would be the team that most benefited from the bye week before hosting their next opponent at the Shoe.
Georgia didn’t lose to Auburn on Saturday so much as it beat itself. Quarterback Gunner Stockton fumbled away the opportunity for the Bulldogs to methodically play for a field goal and win the game with no time remaining — just as Auburn did. It’s the first time all year Georgia beat itself, and a loss was only appropriate.
The Bulldogs played down to their competition. I don’t expect them to keep doing that. As for the other power conferences, Miami — despite needing two overtimes to beat Florida State in Week 7 — is comfortably separated from its ACC competition in SMU and Wake Forest.
And among a defense-scarce Big 12, BYU currently owns the best win of the season compared with Texas Tech, Utah and Houston. But more on the Cougars in a moment. FIRST HYPOTHETICAL AT-LARGE BID 5.
Notre Dame, independent Knowing that Notre Dame hadn’t played an opponent many of us think is worth a damn until Saturday, I can’t say that the loss the Fighting Irish took to BYU makes me feel good about their chance to win the national title. I am feeling just a little bit better about their chance to make the CFP, even in a 24-team format. But not that much.
Notre Dame is penciled in here at No. 5 and easily will be erased from the 24-team CFP if it drops its all-important game against Miami in the weeks to come. And then it really needs to beat SMU on Nov.
21. Why? Because, as selection committee chair, I’d find it hard to include a program with three losses to top-25 teams.
Call it the James Franklin Axiom: No team that can’t beat a top-25 squad should be included in the CFP. We already believe the ACC is weak, and we know that its membership makes up half of Notre Dame's schedule. To wit, just two ACC teams are represented here in the seeding, and one of them is an SMU program without a top-25 win itself.
I realize there are those who want that BYU loss to mean something because it essentially vaulted the Cougars into the spot Notre Dame held before Saturday. But the only way that one holds up is if BYU can continue to run the table. It’s not as if the Big 12 is as good as the Big Ten or SEC.
In fact, the last time the Big 12 featured a team in the national title game, TCU got tossed in the blender as Georgia hit the purée button. Notre Dame needs BYU to carry its water like its name is Beatrice Kiddo, and Pai Mei is waiting at the top of those steps to turn it into the world’s greatest living assassin. AT-LARGE BIDS: THREE ADDITIONAL TEAMS WITH FIRST-ROUND BYES 6.
Indiana7. Tennessee8. Kentucky Indiana is good.
It’s just not great. Good will get the Hoosiers back to the national championship game — just as it did for Miami last year. The difference this year isn’t that Indiana could get beaten by a team that’s great; it's that we haven’t really seen one better than good.
Perhaps that team is Miami this year. After all, 2025 Indiana survived a scare against a Penn State team that fired its head coach weeks before their game. And that might be what Miami did against Florida State.
But what I know about Indiana is it had Ohio State on the run. The Hoosiers are a footstep out of bounds from winning 23 straight, doubling up the 2024 national champs and staring down Miami with that same "we own you" expression Hoosiers fans had enjoyed on Curt Cignetti’s face for 22 games. Give Cignetti a week to prepare for an opponent and watch him identify the weakness and exploit it again and again.
AT-LARGE BIDS: NOs. 9-16 SEEDS WITH FIRST-ROUND HOME GAMES 9. Ole Miss10.
Texas Tech11. UCLA12. Alabama13.
Utah14. Florida15. Houston16.
Iowa Everybody but Ole Miss, Texas Tech and Alabama is happy to be here. And Alabama is furious about it. And if you read either of the aforementioned sentences as insults, then you get the point.
The rest of the field is made of teams who were never good enough to earn selection into the CFP in the four-team iteration or the previous 12-team ones. Other than Alabama and Ole Miss, I simply have not seen the kind of talent necessary to plow through three rounds of the CFP and win the national title. The way forward for these teams is the most difficult: Play their best and cleanest football while their opponents, particularly in the second round, blunder and beat themselves with unforced errors and catastrophic mistakes.
None of these programs is without flaws, but four of them — Alabama, Ole Miss, Houston and Utah — feature a playmaker at quarterback who can bail them out of subpar defensive play. The best part of being seeded between No. 8 and No.
17 is the home-field advantage you’ll open the tournament with. That was enough for 2024 Ohio State to go on a run and win the national title. Perhaps that’s enough for these teams too.
AT-LARGE BIDS: NOs. 16-24 WITH FIRST-ROUND ROAD GAMES 17. Missouri18.
Oklahoma State19. USC20. Oregon21.
LSU22. SMU23. Northwestern24.
James Madison (automatic qualifier) Good Lord. How the mighty have fallen. Look at this group.
We’ve got USC and LSU slumming with SMU, Oklahoma State and the Group of Six designated survivor — I mean automatic qualifier — James Madison. We have Oregon forced to make polite conversation with Missouri and Northwestern at the open bar, as the Tigers and Wildcats are openly marveling at the fast WiFi, lunch buffet and CFP credentials around their necks. Again, they’re just happy to be here, while LSU is seething that no one here remembers it won this damn thing seven years ago.
Internally, the Ducks have to be wondering whether their first national title is getting further out of reach rather than closer. If the 24-team CFP came online this year and not next, and USC is seeded where I ranked them on Sunday, Trojans fans would know they are stuck with Lincoln Riley for at least one more year because, after all, he would've finally got them to the CFP — despite fans quietly realizing their defense isn’t good enough to win it. Of course, only one of these teams could raise their hand and make a run for the national title — not you, though, JMU.
Put your hand down — and has the talent to do so. That team is Lane Kiffin's LSU. And that’s the real conundrum here: Can the third-highest paid head coach in history, with perhaps the most expensive roster in history, really go on the road twice and then win twice more to collect the 2026 national title?
I think not. But that’s why this 24-team CFP exists. What you or I or anyone thinks doesn't ultimately pick the national champion.
Every team that should get in does.
