Okay, so today I wanted to mess around with making a 12-team playoff bracket. It’s something that’s been talked about a lot, and it’s actually happening starting with the 2024-25 college football season. I figured, why not try to make one myself, just to see how it works and all.
First, I did some digging around online to get the basic rules down. It turns out that the 12 teams are picked with the five highest-ranked conference champions getting automatic spots. Then, the four highest-ranked conference champions get seeded 1 through 4 and they get a bye in the first round. That’s pretty cool, gives those top teams a bit of an advantage.
Next, I grabbed a piece of paper and started sketching out the bracket. I marked down the seeds, 1 through 12. For the first round, it’s seeds 5 through 12 playing each other. So, I drew lines connecting those matchups: 5 vs. 12, 6 vs. 11, 7 vs. 10, and 8 vs. 9. I labeled these as the first-round games.
After that, I moved on to the quarterfinals. This is where those top 4 seeds come in. They’ll play the winners of the first-round games. The way it’s structured, seed 1 plays the winner of the 8/9 game, seed 2 plays the winner of the 7/10 game, and so on. I drew more lines to show these matchups on my bracket.
Then came the semifinals. I connected the winners of the quarterfinal games with lines to create two semifinal matchups. Finally, I drew one last line to connect the two semifinal winners, which leads to the championship game.
I also found out that they announced the actual bracket on a Sunday in December. They’ll probably do the same this year.
Honestly, it took a bit of trial and error to get the bracket looking right. I made a few mistakes, had to erase some lines, and redraw them. But in the end, I managed to create a full 12-team playoff bracket. It was actually kind of fun to visualize how it all works.
Here’s a breakdown of how I did it:
- Gathered information about the 12-team playoff format.
- Sketched out a basic bracket on paper with 12 seeds.
- Drew lines to connect the first-round matchups (seeds 5-12).
- Added the top 4 seeds to the quarterfinals, connecting them to the first-round winners.
- Created the semifinal matchups by connecting the quarterfinal winners.
- Drew a final line to represent the championship game.
It might sound a little complicated, but once you start drawing it out, it makes a lot more sense. It’s definitely a different format than what they had before, but I think it could make things more interesting!
