2026 season
Projected playoff bracket
Built from your picks: conference champions first, then the field of
twelve, straight-seeded.
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The format
- Five conference champions receive automatic bids: the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC champions, plus the highest-ranked champion from every other league.
- Seven at-large teams complete the field of twelve.
- The bracket is straight-seeded: seeds 1 through 4 receive first-round byes, 5 plays 12, 6 plays 11, 7 plays 10 and 8 plays 9, with the higher seed hosting.
- Quarterfinal and semifinal sites rotate among the New Year's Six bowls.
One team from outside the four power
conferences. The printed rule is "the five highest-ranked conference champions",
which sounds open but has never resolved any other way: the four power champions are
always ranked inside the top five champions, so the fifth automatic bid is the Group of
Five's, and no team from those leagues has taken an at-large spot. This projection
applies it that way — four power champions, the best champion from everyone else,
and an at-large pool of power-conference and independent teams. Read literally, the rule
would let a second Group of Five champion in; read against every bracket that has
actually been built, it does not.
This is not a committee forecast.
The selection committee ranks teams by judgement. This page needs an order it can
actually derive, so it uses the one you choose — projected record with last
season's efficiency margin as the tiebreak, or the rating alone. Two reasonable rules
produce two different brackets, which is the honest shape of the problem.
Change the picks
Every conference's games are
pickable on its predictor page. The same picks drive this
bracket, this browser remembers them, and the address bar holds a shareable link.