Who's in, who's out, and who's on the bubble for a hypothetical 24-team field -- recomputed live from this site's own national rating and conference data.
HYPOTHETICAL 24-team format (reported for 2027; not the current format). If the season ended today. Field: the ACC/Big 12/Big Ten/SEC champions + the highest-ranked Group-of-Six team (5 automatic bids), plus 19 at-large teams by ranking -- seeded 1-24 straight by this site's own rankings, champions included (no protected seeds). Notre Dame has no special rule. Seeds 1-8 get a first-round bye. Fixed bracket, never reseeded: 9v24, 10v23 ... 16v17 in the First Round; seed 1 plays the 16/17 winner, seed 2 the 15/18 winner, down to seed 8 vs. the 9/24 winner. Every round is simulated forward with this site's own matchup projection to a projected national champion.
The 24-team bracket is being simulated (23 matchup projections) -- refresh in a minute or two. The seeded field and resume below are already final.
| SEED | TEAM | RATING | SOS | QUALIFIED AS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 BYE | 66.0 | 43.9 | At-large | |
| 2 BYE | 70.5 | 44.6 | Big Ten champion | |
| 3 BYE | 65.2 | 52.4 | At-large | |
| 4 BYE | 62.9 | 36.6 | ACC champion | |
| 5 BYE | 50.5 | 49.9 | At-large | |
| 6 BYE | 62.0 | 54.8 | At-large | |
| 7 BYE | 67.5 | 41.1 | At-large | |
| 8 BYE | 65.9 | 43.3 | SEC champion | |
| 9 | 55.2 | 43.4 | At-large | |
| 10 | 61.8 | 49.7 | At-large | |
| 11 | 61.3 | 40.5 | Big 12 champion | |
| 12 | 49.6 | 43.5 | At-large | |
| 13 | 59.0 | 45.4 | At-large | |
| 14 | 59.4 | 44.8 | At-large | |
| 15 | 57.6 | 39.4 | At-large | |
| 16 | 49.9 | 38.8 | At-large | |
| 17 | 53.2 | 45.9 | At-large | |
| 18 | 53.2 | 40.6 | At-large | |
| 19 | 49.1 | 41.6 | At-large | |
| 20 | 48.6 | 43.4 | At-large | |
| 21 | 56.1 | 46.2 | At-large | |
| 22 | 53.8 | 39.5 | At-large | |
| 23 | 49.6 | 41.8 | Group of Six, highest ranked | |
| 24 | 63.0 | 44.0 | At-large |
| TEAM | RATING | SOS | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| -- | 56.9 | 45.6 | Next in line | |
| -- | 49.5 | 44.1 | Next in line | |
| -- | 52.9 | 41.5 | Next in line | |
| -- | 55.9 | 49.2 | Next in line |
Teams are ranked and seeded by the same blend of this season's record against its schedule and power rating that /rankings uses; RATING is the power rating. SOS here is a plain average of a team's played opponents' ratings (not the recency-weighted term inside the model itself) -- shown for context, not used to pick the field. "Conference champion" is a PROJECTION, not simply whoever holds the best record today: every remaining in-conference game is simulated jointly (one shared coin flip per game, not each team guessing independently) thousands of times to build a full projected conference standings table each time, and then -- since all 4 of these conferences settle their title with a championship game between the top 2 teams in that standings table, not simply by record -- ONE MORE game is simulated between whichever two teams finish 1st/2nd in conference record that run, at a neutral site (no home-field edge for either side). That title game's winner, not just the better regular-season conference record, is the conference champion shown here, with how often it happened across every simulation next to its name. Still a disclosed proxy: this library tracks no REAL title-game result, only this simulated one, and the "projected final record" figures shown elsewhere on this site (the bracket's own "proj. final W-L" line, for instance) do NOT yet include this extra game for whichever teams reach it -- a real, separate follow-up.
