What a college football 64-team playoff bracket would look like in 2023

The stalemate over playoff expansion in college football has ended. Finally.

In 2024, the format will go from four teams to 12, meaning refreshingly there will be a few new faces added to the postseason festivities. Of course, we here at ESPN have been ahead of the curve for a few years and will again count it down from 64 teams in our fictional 2023 NCAA football tournament.

Here’s the format: We’ve seeded the teams 1 through 64, and the seeds are based to some degree on ESPN’s latest SP+ projections entering the 2023 season.

The top four seeds are Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State and Alabama (yes, 17 playoff appearances among them). With the Crimson Tide being the fourth No. 1 seed, that means they will travel to the West Region. Keep in mind that seeds aren’t written in stone, and just like in any tournament in any sport, there will be upsets. The basketball committee insists it doesn’t look for compelling storylines when setting up its bracket. We’re just the opposite. We’ll do our best to create those storylines.

So let the second-guessing begin. We’re braced for it, the claims of SEC bias (even though 13 of the past 17 national champs were produced by the SEC) and the chastising over so-called snubs and perennial powers being slayed in the early rounds.

We’ve done our homework as we look ahead to the 2023 season, but remember to have a little fun. It’s called March Madness for a reason.

Today, we will examine the field and work our way through the first two rounds of the tournament, narrowing the pool from 64 to 16. We’ll then play the rest of the games and crown a national champion.