In honor of March Madness, here's a 68-team college football bracket

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Today, let’s make everything about us. We’re turning the NCAA Tournament into a football thing. (I assume the following image is too small to read on your phone, so below it, I’ve also screenshotted each region individually.)

Football Madness: Here is way too much football

A decade or so ago, in the time of the BCS and early CFP, using March as the occasion for putting together a comically huge college football bracket felt like a fantastical exercise. Obviously, a big bracket would never happen!

But now? With decision-makers discussing potential expansion to 16 even before the 12-teamer happened? Kinda feels like this large bracket is merely ahead of the S-curve.

To make this edition, I looked for a website with a well-designed bracket PDF. That website happened to be my employer’s. (Men’s and women’s printable brackets.) Then I ruined that design in Paintbrush.

As for seeding:

• I included automatic bids for all Division I conference champs, just like basketball, even though the Big Ten and SEC would lobby for 34 auto-bids each. Absolutely, 5-7 Oregon State is here, a reward for going 1-0 in conference.
• Then, a combo of polls and computers added our at-larges and ranked all 68 teams together. BCS back! I treated the final AP and FCS polls as equal, which boosted FCS teams nicely (because it’s not like the NCAA’s brackets dump all mid-majors to the bottom). I blended that with the Massey composite, which combines dozens of computer ratings, and Sagarin ratings, which mix FBS and FCS teams.
• After that, overall No. 1 seed Ohio State got the most favorable geography, and I followed snake order from there. I didn’t mess with anything to avoid rematches or whatever. That brings us to:

• This region’s best first-round matchup: America’s greatest university meets Harvard.
• Best later-round potential: Tennessee (No. 9 in offensive snaps) vs. Iowa (No. 132) would look like … a football game in a basketball bracket.
• Upset Watch: Ohio State would be a six-touchdown favorite against the Drake Bulldogs, so Ohio State isn’t on Upset Watch. But 12-seed Oklahoma could be just a 4-point underdog against longtime SEC rival South Carolina, per FPI.

(Also, we’re not considering FCS-FBS lines for Upset Watch, because Vegas would say I overrated FCS teams. Vegas doesn’t understand our alternate reality, in which FCS teams have been making the 68-team CFP for years — and thus have recruited more FBS-level talent.)

• Best first-round matchup: Whenever you want to sound like a CFB ball-knower, the easiest way is to say something about K-State or Memphis always being underrated. By calling their meeting a must-watch, I sound like an ultimate ball-knower.
• Best later-round potential: Lane Kiffin, after talking all that trash about the CFP committee, you better not lose to an FCS team — specifically, the FCS team that has been the best at beating FBS teams.
• Upset Watch: Against Iowa State, 13-seed Arkansas could be a pick ’em, per FPI and SP+.

More bracket below, after this newsletter does its actual job and shares some actual football news.

Quick Snaps

💰 “A nine-figure shot at relevance for a football program that has never won a conference title.” Matt Baker on USF‘s $340 million stadium bet.
💪 Early notes on the QB battles (or non-battles) at Michigan, Georgia and Ohio State.
🌀 “Some universities are invoking a new threat to keep their players: Leave, and you’ll owe us money.” Stewart Mandel and Ralph Russo on NIL buyouts.
🗻 For real, why don’t you two just merge already? Late last week, the Pac-12 and Mountain West approached legal resolution.
👍 Every few years, somebody floats the idea of turning spring games into scrimmages with other teams. Time might be right, and Colorado might be the team that could do it.

Football Madness: The other half of the enormous bracket

• Best first-round matchup: Before the season, if you learned Illinois-Vandy would reach a 68-team tournament, you would’ve congratulated them for making the play-in round.
• Best later-round potential: Several potential rematches of classic rivalries, like Army-Navy … Alabama-Vanderbilt …
• Upset Watch: Kansas could be just a field goal underdog against lifelong Big 12 rival BYU, per FPI and SP+.

• Best first-round matchup: I’m sensing traces of worry on both sidelines in LSU-Nebraska, while the religion nerds will enjoy debating which jokes apply to SMU-Incarnate Word.
• Best later-round potential: Texas is in the region with the highest number of schools that hate Texas (all the current/former Big 12 teams, SMU, various other Texans …), which is incredible, because a different region has Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Texas Tech.
• Upset Watch: SP+ would make the Broncos only 4.5-point favorites against 14-seed Duke.

Also, here were the first four teams out of the bracket: Rutgers, Boston College, UCLA and Montana. A team from my beloved Big Sky Conference falling short proves I oversaw an ethical process.

Football Madness: The other half of the enormous bracket

Before we go, three things to share with you before this week’s tipoffs of the actual NCAA tourneys, the ones with basketball:

• Brian Hamilton on everything realignment (and money reallocation) has changed about college hoops, as demonstrated by the SEC landing 10 more teams in this men’s bracket than the ACC, a conference with far more history of caring about basketball.
• Fun recruiting angle: If women’s players all stayed home for college, which state would win March Madness?
• About a million bracket-picking guides from The Athletic, all linked in one place.

📫 Love Until Saturday? Check out The Athletic’s other newsletters. And if you have thoughts on any of this, I will see them at untilsaturday@theathletic.com.

(Top photo: Ronald Martinez, Christian Petersen / Getty Images)