SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
College sports brackets are not just for March. Now we can debate them in December too. Division I college football's expanded tournament is finally here with a 12-team bracket announced today. The first round begins in a couple of weeks with the National Championship coming in late January, and here to break it all down for us is Nicole Auerbach. She's NBC Sports' lead college football insider. Welcome back to the show.
NICOLE AUERBACH: Yeah, thanks for having me.
DETROW: Big takeaways from the list and the announcement today?
AUERBACH: I think 12 is the right size for the bracket this year. It went from four to 12, and there was really only a debate about one team, Southern Methodist University getting the final at-large spot over Alabama and Alabama team that had three losses, and two of them coming to six and six teams in SEC play. SMU - close loss in the ACC championship game - I think it's good for the sport and for the College Football Playoff Selection Committee that they decided to keep the Mustangs in the field. And that was really it from terms of controversy, which means I think that people felt pretty good about 11 of these 12 teams and just one controversial pick. But it's the right size field. There's good, but maybe not great, teams. And I think that that's going to set up well for a great tournament.
DETROW: Maybe not to the fan base, but it's hard to feel devastated about coming in 13th instead of coming in fifth in that old system because four just always felt too small.
AUERBACH: Yeah, this is not like the type of snub that Florida State experienced last year after winning all of their games. This system, you're going to have teams that are flawed, that are going to have losses that they could have/should have avoided. And they'll really only have themselves to blame if they're not able to get into the bracket, kind of like with March Madness.
DETROW: Yeah.
AUERBACH: The teams on the bubble are going to have issues.
DETROW: OK, so now we have the bracket. We know the first round and the byes. What jumped out to you as the team with maybe the best path through and the team that has a really uphill road?
AUERBACH: Well, I think the No. 5 and No. 6 seats have really good paths. So No. 5 is Texas. They've got Clemson in the first round, and then No. 4 seated Arizona State, which is a team that really surprised people - got hot late at the end of the year to earn that spot out of the Big 12. But that looks like two winnable games where I think Texas would be favored in a path to the semifinals. And then Penn State at No. 6, they get SMU, that last team in the field. And then No. 3 seed Boise State out of the group of five, so they also feel like a team that has a pretty clear path to the semifinals. You know, Oregon's the No. 1 overall seed. George's No. 2. I expect them to be strong contenders to get there at the end too because of how good they are and how much talent they have on those rosters.
DETROW: Can you take a step back, and for people who haven't been paying as close of attention, how much does this change the typical patterns we're used to for mid- to late December on? Like, how much looks the same for Bowl season? How much is going to look wildly different?
AUERBACH: This changes everything for December for college football. I mean, the idea of on-campus games is totally new and totally foreign after we've spent so many years focused on Bowl sites. And just the amount...
DETROW: Right 'cause they're home games the first round.
AUERBACH: Yeah, these are home games. Like, it's going to be awesome. You might have snow in South Bend. You might have snow in Happy Valley. You're getting these teams from the South that are coming up to play, like Tennessee coming to Columbus to play Ohio State. But I think also the amount of games that you're going to have to win to win a national championship is going to be significantly different. You're going to have to go through four rounds to get there. Instead of typically, we'd just kind of wait, and you'd have one semifinal. There'd been a lot of blowouts and then a national championship game.
DETROW: Quick last question - do you want to put it on the line and give us a championship prediction?
AUERBACH: I'm going to go with the team that I had in the preseason. They've backed me up throughout the course of the season, and that's Oregon. They've won every game they've played. They've been consistent. They have a quarterback in Dillon Gabriel who's a veteran, experienced guy that I trust with a lot of offensive talent around him. So I'm going to take the Ducks to hoist the trophy at the end.
DETROW: That's Nicole Auerbach of NBC Sports. Thank you so much.
AUERBACH: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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