Unlike last year, when the College Football Playoff committee overthought itself into making a very regrettable decision (Alabama over unbeaten Florida State), it kept things rather simple this season, picking the most deserving teams, not the best teams, to play in the 12-team CFP. That's the way things should be.
But according to SP+, a bracket featuring the best teams would have looked awfully different. The CFP will not feature two of the five best teams in the country, and the single best team is the No. 8 seed. Still, in a year in which the main story has been the extreme clustering of the teams at the top -- this week's top eight teams are separated by just 3.