Three key questions will be answered when the College Football Playoff round is released

We had March Madness. Now there’s December drama.

There will be a college football bracket on Sunday afternoon: 12 teams in the first year of the expanded College Football Playoff.

After a decade of selecting four schools, the sport expanded to give more programs a chance. This created additional interest in the regular season and a feeling that the championship was truly up for grabs.

The pairings will be announced shortly after noon. The top four spots will be awarded to the top-ranked conference champions rather than the top four ranked teams, which could cause chaos down the road.

The postal service is preparing you for the celebrations:

Who is No. 1?

That’s easy. Undefeated Oregon entered the Big Ten championship game as the clear favorite and secured the top spot with a 45-37 win over third-seeded Penn State.

However, finishing No. 1 isn’t much of an advantage aside from getting a bye.

Oregon faces No. 8/No. 9 winner, which will likely be a tougher quarterfinal opponent than the fifth seed if it gets that far since the top four seeds are conference champions.

This is something that needs to be addressed in the future.

Imagine if the SEC or Big 12 runner-up got a lower seed than the AAC or Atlantic 10 winner in the NCAA Tournament on the hardwood?

Is Alabama there?

The Crimson Tide were considered eliminated after a no-show at six-win Oklahoma a few weeks ago.

But everything has gone well since then. Alabama edged Auburn in the Iron Bowl, while Miami, Ole Miss and Texas A&M all lost games, giving Kalen DeBoer’s team a three-game lead.

Heading into the day, most experts felt Alabama was safe since it was ranked No. 11 by the committee. Since No. 8 SMU lost the ACC Championship Game to No. 17 Clemson, there is a possibility that the Mustangs could knock off the Crimson Tide.

SMU has one less loss, but nowhere near the quality of Alabama’s home win over Georgia, which looks even better now that the Bulldogs won the strong SEC. And the committee moved teams down several spots to suffer losses.

It’s hard to imagine Alabama being left out. Miami, ranked No. 12, doesn’t appear to have a realistic chance as it is actually ranked No. 13 as No. 15 Arizona State was automatically selected as the Big 12 champion.

What does the opening round look like?

Oregon (Big Ten), Georgia (SEC) and No. 10 Boise State (highest Group of Five conference winner) receive three byes.

Then in the fourth it comes down to Arizona State or Clemson. We give Arizona State the slight advantage because it has one less loss.

Notre Dame, which has just one loss, gets the top and fifth seed and draws Clemson in a thrilling opening round matchup.

I don’t think the committee will penalize Texas too much for the loss in the conference championship game.

Texas falls to No. 6 and will face No. 11 Alabama. While Penn State played well against Oregon, it lost straight to Ohio State, giving the Buckeyes the advantage.

Ohio State is the seventh seed and will face No. 10 Indiana, while Penn State drops to No. 8 and will face ninth-seeded Tennessee.

There are a few potential blockbusters highlighted by the Texas-Alabama showdown.

All four contests will be played on campus, with the quarterfinals moving to bowl locations. This is another attractive aspect of this new system.