2024 College Football Playoff, bowl projections after Week 6 - ESPN

Week 6 produced the wildest weekend of the season yet, with four teams in the top 11 taking it on the chin, highlighted by No. 1 Alabama losing to unranked Vanderbilt.

Two other SEC teams suffered their first loss, with Tennessee falling at unranked Arkansas and Missouri getting drubbed at No. 25 Texas A&M. And two highly regarded Big Ten teams — Michigan and USC — each suffered their second loss of the season, losing to unranked Washington and Minnesota, respectively.

It marked the first time that five teams in the AP top 11 lost on the same day since Nov. 12, 2016, and the first time ever that two top-5 SEC teams lost to unranked teams in the same day. In all, seven teams suffered their first loss of the season. And then there's Miami, which needed a dramatic, late-night comeback over Cal to keep the zero in its loss column.

What does all that mean for the College Football Playoff and the overall bowl picture?

In the new, expanded 12-team playoff, the five highest-ranked conference champions will make the field along with the next seven highest-ranked teams. The four highest-ranked conference champions will be awarded first-round byes, with the other eight teams meeting at the campus sites of the Nos. 5-8 seeds.

From there, the quarterfinals and semifinals will be played in what had been the New Year's Six bowls, with this season's national championship game scheduled for Jan. 20 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

All of that is just the tip of the iceberg, though. Apart from the playoff is the 36-game slate of bowls, from the Cricket Celebration Bowl on Dec. 14 to the Bahamas Bowl on Jan. 4.

We're here for all of it.

ESPN bowl gurus Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach are projecting every postseason matchup, including