The initial College Football Playoff rankings were revealed on ESPN on Tuesday evening.

For the first time, the CFP is expanding to 12 teams for the 2024 season. Because of the way the format is structured, the official bracket will not necessarily mirror the final CFP rankings. That’s because the 5 highest-ranked conference champs all earn automatic bids regardless of rankings. Additionally, the 4 highest-ranked conference champions are all set to earn a first-round bye.

That will likely create inconsistencies between what the selection committee rankings look like versus the projected CFP bracket on a week-to-week basis. For example, BYU was ranked 9th in the initial CFP reveal on Tuesday evening but the Cougars will slot in as the No. 4 seed in the bracket because they are the fourth-highest ranked conference champion.

Additionally, Ohio State landed at No. 2 in the CFP rankings on Tuesday night but the Buckeyes are not the highest-ranked team from the Big Ten — Oregon is. That means Ohio State gets knocked down to the 5-seed in the projected bracket.

Here’s what the bracket looks like after the first week of the selection committee rankings:

https://twitter.com/espn/status/1853955923959595099

First-round matchups are set to take place on campus sites, which means Ohio State would host Boise State in Columbus. Likewise, Tennessee would host Indiana, Texas would host Alabama and Penn State would host Notre Dame. The winners of those games would move on to face the top-4 seeds in the quarterfinal round: BYU, Miami, Georgia and Oregon.

The next round of CFP rankings will be revealed next Tuesday night.

Spenser Davis

Spenser is a news editor for Saturday Down South and covers college football across all Saturday Football brands.