The College Football Playoff field is set.
Clemson is the No. 1 seed and will play No. 4 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
Oklahoma is the No. 2 seed and will face No. 3 Georgia in the Rose Bowl.
Clemson, Oklahoma and Alabama are all making repeat appearances in the field.
The trio along with Ohio State have accounted for 11 of the 16 berths in the four years of the systems. This the first time Georgia has been selected.
The Tigers enter as the defending champions after crushing Miami (Fla.) in the ACC title game. The Crimson Tide beat out Big Ten champion Ohio State for the final spot despite not winning its SEC division.
It's the first time two teams from the same conference have made the field. It's also the second consecutive season a team that did not play in a conference championship game was selected.
This will be the third consecutive meeting in the playoff between Clemson and Alabama. They played in the last two championship games with the Tide winning in 2015 and the Tigers winning in 2016.
The Sooners and Bulldogs both clinched their spots with respective conference championship game victories in the Big 12 and SEC.
Georgia’s path to its first college football national championship in thirty-seven years is now clearer. Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs will face Lincoln Riley’s Oklahoma Sooners in the Granddaddy of Them All on New Year’s Day 2018.
Oklahoma, 12-1 and champions of the Big XII, are coming off a 41-17 victory over TCU in their conference title game. The Sooners are of course led by Heisman Trophy front runner Baker Mayfield and a high-powered offense. Their lone stumble this season was a 38-31 October defeat at the hands of an upstart Iowa State team.
The matchup of this Sooner scoring machine and Georgia’s stingy defense should be one of the more anticipated contests of the bowl season.
The game marks the first contest between these two storied programs, and returns Georgia to the Rose Bowl for the first time since beating UCLA there in 1943.