{"id":"1793308835525-sports-segment","slug":"the-imaginary-68-team-college-football-bracket","title":"The imaginary 68-team college football bracket","summary":"There is no real 68-team college football tournament. The College Football Playoff is a 12-team event; the 68-team bracket was a \"what if\" thought experiment published by The Athletic's Jason Kirk. Indiana won the actual 2025-26 CFP title. This is a subjective opinion about the season's entertainment value, not a factual claim that can be checked.","publishedAt":"2026-10-29T21:20:35.525Z","channel":{"id":"sports","name":"Oncast Sports","language":"en"},"show":"The Pregame","verification":{"status":"verified","leadVerdict":"MISLEADING","notes":"MISLEADING: There is no real 68-team college football tournament. The College Football Playoff is a 12-team event; the 68-team bracket was a \"what if\" thought experiment published by The Athletic's Jason Kirk. Indiana won the actual 2025-26 CFP title. This is a subjective opinion about the season's entertainment value, not a factual claim that can be checked.\nSource: nytimes.com (The Athletic); ncaa.com NAMES: CFP = College Football Playoff; FCS = Football Championship Subdivision, Division I's lower tier; Tarleton State, St (https://x.com/PlayBracco/status/2115147650731319325)","claims":[{"verdict":"MISLEADING","summary":"There is no real 68-team college football tournament. The College Football Playoff is a 12-team event; the 68-team bracket was a \"what if\" thought experiment published by The Athletic's Jason Kirk. Indiana won the actual 2025-26 CFP title. This is a subjective opinion about the season's entertainment value, not a factual claim that can be checked.","sourceName":"nytimes.com (The Athletic); ncaa.com NAMES: CFP = College Football Playoff; FCS = Football Championship Subdivision, Division I's lower tier; Tarleton State, St","sourceUrl":"https://x.com/PlayBracco/status/2115147650731319325","claim":"68-team college football tournament. March Madness rules. FCS teams in. 🏈 1 seeds: Miami, Ohio State, Georgia, Indiana FCS crashing the party: Tarleton St, SFA, Montana St, Youngstown St and more Who's your Cinderella? 👇 https://t.co/Eksd6B4MtR","author":"Bracco | Social Sportsbook (@PlayBracco)"}]},"sources":[{"url":"https://x.com/PlayBracco/status/2115147650731319325","name":"nytimes.com (The Athletic); ncaa.com NAMES: CFP = College Football Playoff; FCS = Football Championship Subdivision, Division I's lower tier; Tarleton State, St","kind":"x","verdict":"MISLEADING","author":"Bracco | Social Sportsbook (@PlayBracco)"}],"url":"https://oncast.fm/story/1793308835525-sports-segment-the-imaginary-68-team-college-football-bracket","listenUrl":"https://oncast.fm/c/sports","attribution":{"publisher":"Oncast","site":"https://oncast.fm","url":"https://oncast.fm/story/1793308835525-sports-segment-the-imaginary-68-team-college-football-bracket","cite":"Cite https://oncast.fm/story/1793308835525-sports-segment-the-imaginary-68-team-college-football-bracket and the original source links. Fact-check by Oncast (oncast.fm)."},"hostsSaid":[{"host":"Marcus","text":"Somebody just went and built college football a sixty-eight team March Madness bracket, and the internet cannot stop staring at it."},{"host":"Liam","text":"Oh, I'm in. One seeds — Miami, Ohio State, Georgia, Indiana. Tarleton State gets a bid, Stephen F. Austin's in, Youngstown State's in."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"Alright, time-out. Before you fill out your bracket — this thing is not real."},{"host":"Liam","text":"What do you mean not real?"},{"host":"Marcus","text":"It's a what-if. Jason Kirk at The Athletic drew it up as a thought experiment. The actual playoff is twelve teams. Twelve."},{"host":"Liam","text":"Okay, fine, the bracket's imaginary. But you cannot tell me the idea doesn't slap."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"I can absolutely tell you that. Sixty-eight teams? Do you know how many games that is?"},{"host":"Liam","text":"That's the point! March Madness rules. Cinderellas. FCS teams crashing the party. That's the best part of sports!"},{"host":"Marcus","text":"In basketball, a Cinderella plays a couple games and the fairy tale's over. In football, that Cinderella is a running back taking thirty-five carries against a line of future first-rounders."},{"host":"Liam","text":"So what? They line up, they play. That's why we watch."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"Liam, this sport is violent. You're asking college kids to play sixteen, seventeen, eighteen games to win one trophy."},{"host":"Liam","text":"You know what's violent? Watching the same programs grab every title shot while a team like Indiana gets told to sit down."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"Indiana won the actual playoff last year! A team nobody picked. The twelve-team field already gave you your Cinderella."},{"host":"Liam","text":"One year? We just expanded to twelve and it worked — that's an argument to go bigger."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"That's like saying one good meal means you should eat seventeen cheeseburgers."},{"host":"Liam","text":"No, no, wait — that's exactly backward. Craig Mish posted it today — it's now March Madness every Saturday. The chaos is the product."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"The chaos is the product because the regular season still matters. Expand to sixty-eight, and an App State over Michigan turns into a quaint little tune-up."},{"host":"Liam","text":"So you want the rich to stay rich. No room for Youngstown State unless they buy their way in."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"I want the games in October to count for something. You make the field sixty-eight, every big team just coasts."},{"host":"Liam","text":"Every big team's already coasting on name brand! You know how many two-loss SEC teams got the benefit of the doubt?"},{"host":"Marcus","text":"Oh, here we go."},{"host":"Liam","text":"I'm serious. Expand the field and the Montana States of the world finally get an actual shot, not a participation trophy in the FCS."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"Except they play in a different division for a reason! You know what happens to Montana State against Georgia's twos?"},{"host":"Liam","text":"We'd find out. That's the fun part."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"The fun part for who? Not the Montana State defensive end trying to block a nineteen-year-old who weighs three-forty."},{"host":"Liam","text":"Then don't watch the blowout rounds. March Madness has blowouts too."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"Fine. You want my actual hill? We haven't lived through the twelve-team format more than a season or two, and people are already drafting sixty-eight. Give it five years."},{"host":"Liam","text":"I'd rather try the bracket now than sit through five more years of a committee handing the same teams a bye."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"Alright, TJ Salomone found the funniest version of this whole fight."},{"host":"Liam","text":"Oh, the Norvell one. Basically — Florida State's Mike Norvell loves a twenty-four team playoff because it gives him a new excuse: we finished seventy-eighth, we were right there."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"That's mean and I respect it. Though to be clear — we don't even know if Norvell actually said he wants twenty-four teams."},{"host":"Liam","text":"Doesn't matter. The joke lands because Florida State fans have heard every version of we're rebuilding for years."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"Harsh. Accurate. But harsh."},{"host":"Liam","text":"Hey, you want a team that actually rebuilt into something? One college football account says Wake Forest has quietly become one of the biggest stories this season."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"The same account says they won on the road at then-number-sixteen Louisville and have rolled everybody since. If that holds up, that's a real story."},{"host":"Liam","text":"I want to believe it. Demon Deacons... quietly elite. Has a nice ring."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"We'll see if the numbers back it up. But if Wake Forest is actually rolling like that, the twelve-team field gets a whole lot more interesting."},{"host":"Liam","text":"And if they're not, there's always the imaginary sixty-eight-team bracket."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"Which Jason Kirk should absolutely keep making. As long as nobody confuses it with a rule book."},{"host":"Liam","text":"You're no fun."},{"host":"Marcus","text":"I'm the fun police. Somebody has to check the math."}]}