12-team College Football Playoff bracket offers a new, imperfect way of picking a national champion

Over the decades, no sport has had more issues figuring out its national champion than major college football.

Spoiler alert: The newly expanded 12-team playoff bracket that will be announced Sunday is not the perfect fix.

Only hours before the unveiling of the College Football Playoff pairings, uncertainty reigned after a frantic end to conference championship weekend. The 13-person selection committee that picks the field had issues to sort out.

The biggest: Will they choose Alabama or SMU for the last spot?

Alabama (9-3) is a three-loss team out of the Southeastern Conference that was ranked 11th by the CFP last week, didn’t play this week and was viewed as the last team in. SMU (11-2) came into the week ranked CFP No. 8 but blew its chance for an automatic bid by losing Saturday night’s Atlantic Coast Conference title game thriller, 34-31 to Clemson. The Mustangs have a weaker schedule than the Crimson Tide but only two losses.

SMU rallied from 21 points behind to tie the game, only to see Clemson’s kicker make a 56-yard field goal with no time left.

"I don't know what to say," Mustangs coach Rhett Lashley said. "They don't care what I say. But we should be in, and they know we should be in, so we'll see what happens."

Count on one thing no matter what the field looks like: Upset coaches, upset athletic directors and upset fans.

If it were only as simple as the committee ranking the top 12 teams and placing them in the bracket. It’s not.

The four highest-ranked conference champions earn byes into the quarterfinals, which will take place at bowl games around the country on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1. Those teams look to be Oregon (Big Ten), Georgia (SEC), Boise State (Mountain West) and Arizona State (Big 12).

The other eight teams play first-round games on Dec. 20 and 21 on the campus of the higher-seeded team. They will be bracketed in order of their ranking with one exception. Any of the five best conference champions not ranked in the top 12 are in the tournament. In this case, that means Clemson (CFP No. 17 last week) is in whether it hits the top 12 or not.

Other teams expected to be included in the final eight are Notre Dame, Texas, Penn State, Ohio State, Tennessee and Indiana.

That 12th team will probably be Alabama or SMU.

The quarterfinal winners move to the semifinals at the Orange and Cotton Bowls on Jan. 9-10. The national title game is Jan. 20 in Atlanta.

Before the bracket is even revealed, the favorite is Oregon, at 13-4, according to BetMGM Sportsbook. The Ducks (13-0) are the nation’s only undefeated team.

But even without the 12-team playoff, this has been an unusually hard season to handicap.

There was a major conference realignment (each of the Power Four title games included a newly arrived team - Texas to the SEC, Oregon to the Big Ten, SMU to the ACC, Arizona State to the Big 12), along with the growing influence of the transfer portal and players’ ability to make money, all of which have shaken up rosters and uprooted "business as usual" in the sport.

It led to upsets almost every week this season, which, in turn, made the selection process for the 12-team playoff that much more difficult as it expanded from the four-team format launched in January 2015.

An injury to Georgia quarterback Carson Beck in the SEC title game could throw another wrench into things, but it’s hard to count the Bulldogs out. Coach Kirby Smart’s program is only a season removed from the second of back-to-back titles.

"We're beat up, we're tired, we're mentally fatigued," Smart said. "But I don't know if I've ever had a more mentally tough team. They just keep coming, keep coming. They never say die."