2026-27 Week 9 College Football Playoff, bowl projections - ESPN

Things got spooky in Week 9 as we saw another overtime victory from the reigning national champions, plus more upsets… three of which saw ranked Big Ten teams fall.

Similar to Week 8, we saw five ranked teams fall to unranked opponents Saturday. Unranked Syracuse and Oregon pulled off big conference wins at home, and it was a big day for the state of Iowa as Iowa State and Iowa earned wins over No. 24 Oklahoma State and No. 25 Wisconsin. To cap it off, Lincoln Riley and the USC Trojans stunned No. 2 Ohio State at home as Riley earned his first AP top-five win as USC's coach.

Following all that, we take a look at how the postseason picture shifted after Week 9.

New to the 2026 season, the Power 4 conference champions will receive automatic bids to the CFP along with the highest-ranked Group of 6 team regardless of whether it is a league champ. The remaining slots in the 12-team field will go to the next seven highest-ranked teams. Notre Dame is guaranteed a spot in the field if it is among the top 12 teams.

The four highest-ranked teams (not necessarily conference champions) will be awarded first-round byes. The other eight teams will meet in first-round games at the campus sites of seeds 5 through 8.

The festivities of bowl season kick off with the Cricket Celebration Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Dec. 12 and wrap up with the CFP National Championship at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Jan. 25.

ESPN bowl gurus Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach will make their predictions for all the postseason matchups every week of the season until the actual matchups are set Dec. 6.

All times Eastern

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First-round games (at campus sites)

Friday,