With less than 12 hours until the selection show starts, here's the last chance for predictions.
All rankings are obviously coming into championship weekend.
Conference champions:
-Big Ten: #1 Oregon
-SEC: #5 Georgia
-Mountain West: #10 Boise State
-Big 12: #15 Arizona State
-ACC: #17 Clemson
Oregon, Georgia, and Boise State are clearly the top 3 seeds. I think a fair amount of discussion will be between Arizona State and Clemson getting either the #4 seed or most likely the #12 seed. While Arizona State was ahead of Clemson coming into the weekend, Clemson did beat a better team. Although ASU had a larger margin of victory.
The other seven teams should be:
#2 Texas (will drop)
#3 Penn State (will most likely drop)
#4 Notre Dame
#6 Ohio State
#7 Tennessee
#8 SMU (could drop)
#9 Indiana
If we see any other teams other than these, I will be disappointed in the committee.
How much movement could happen within the top 10? Do Texas and Penn State drop below Notre Dame?
I think there could be enough wiggle room based on this weekend's outcomes that the committee could very well just rank and seed the teams based on best TV matchups.
My prediction for the first round (where the numbers refer to seeding, not ranking):
#12 Clemson at #5 Notre Dame
#11 Indiana at #6 Texas
#10 SMU at #7 Penn State
#9 Tennessee at #8 Ohio State
I think the Notre Dame game will get the Friday night slot on ABC, and Tennessee/Ohio State will get Saturday primetime on ABC, with the other two games slotted in the afternoon slots on TNT.
We've reached the part of the process where the rankings really don't matter any more and it's about the seeding. For example, Boise State will probably improve on their #10 ranking, but it doesn't specifically matter what the ranking is, because they're only being compared to the other four conference champs and they are clearly in the top 4.
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