There has been a lot of talk recently about expanding the college football playoff from 4 teams to 12 teams. In the proposed format, automatic bids would be awarded to the six highest-ranked conference champions, and at-large bids would be awarded to the remaining six highest-ranked teams. If approved, this setup will likely take several years to go into effect, but that does not mean we cannot have a look at the "what-ifs" from past seasons. You might be surprised to find that your team would have had a chance, or even multiple chances, to compete for a national championship under the 12-team format.
Included in this lookback are the hypothetical 12-team brackets for every season dating back to 1998. The final BCS (Bowl Championship Series) rankings and the final CFP (College Football Playoff) rankings were used to create the brackets for the 1998-2013 seasons and the 2014-2020 seasons respectively. It is important to note that the BCS and CFP rankings are likely not a perfect reflection of what a 12-team college football playoff committee would have determined the rankings to be, but for now those are the best substitutes available.
Open up the excel workbook included in this repository and go to the "Bracket" tab. The first thing you will see is the 12-team bracket for the 2020 season.
To switch to another season simply select the season of interest from the dropdown menu below the cell titled "Season". To the right of the bracket you will also notice a breakdown of the automatic bids and the at-large bids along with their respective conference affiliations.
Do keep in mind that the conference affiliations are reflective of what they would have been for that particular season and not what the present-day affiliations are. Lastly, if you would like to understand why the teams were seeded the way they were, check out the "Selection and Seeding Rules" tab.