2020 College Football Playoff National Championship Preview

For a few moments in mid-August of 2020, it seemed as if college football was destined to be canceled for the season due to COVID-19 and its continuing spread. One by one, NCAA conferences decided to cancel fall sports, but a few dug in their heels, intent on competing.

Now that the dust is starting to settle and we have a clearer picture as to what is happening this college football season, we can offer some thoughts on how we think the playoffs seeding will look and what results we can expect.

All conferences outside of the SEC, ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, AAC, C-USA, and Sun Belt will not be competing in 2020, and Notre Dame, which does not belong to a conference for its football schedule, has decided to join the Atlantic Coast Conference for one season.

One Power 5 conference, the Pac-12, has decided to sit this campaign out. They are entertaining the possibility of playing football in the spring of 2021, but they will not be a part of the 2020-21 CFP series.

The current odds leaders for each Power 5 conference are the University of Alabama Crimson (SEC), Clemson Tigers (ACC), and Oklahoma Sooners (Big 12), and Ohio State Buckeyes (Big Ten). We expect Clemson and Alabama to be selected to the four-team CFP bracket, but the University of Texas Longhorns will play spoiler in the Big 12 and also qualify for the NCAAF playoffs by defeating the Sooners.

That leaves one position remaining, and we believe that it will be awarded to Georgia. In 2017, when all college football teams were playing, the SEC sent two teams to the final four, so there's no reason to believe that it won't happen again with two major conferences sitting out for the year.

Those two SEC teams that made the CFP in 2017 were Alabama and the Georgia Bulldogs, and we think that'll happen again this year. Georgia is coming in hot off of an excellent 2019 effort that saw them go 12-2, with one of the losses being to the eventual national champion, the LSU Tigers.

This year, the Bulldogs look to reload and replace departing QB Jake Fromm with transfer from Wake Forest Jamie Newman. We think head coach Coach Kirby Smart has Georgia positioned to win the SEC, and have what it takes to deliver a shocking defeat to the Crimson Tide in the conference championship game. Alabama will still make the CFP as the #4 seed.

That will set up Georgia and Alabama for an instant rematch in the CFP semifinals, with Texas and Clemson facing off in the opposite game. We predict that Alabama and Clemson will advance, with Clemson eventually winning the 2020-21 NCAAF National Championship, and end Tigers' QB Trevor Lawrence's collegiate career in style.