Final bowl projections, now that the College Football Playoff is official

Update: The College Football Playoff is official. Go here for the up-to-the-minute bowl calendar:

Clemson will host a College Football Playoff semifinal at the Orange Bowl. Alabama will host a Playoff semifinal at the Cotton Bowl. Michigan State and Oklahoma will be the road teams.

Now we wait until 12:30 p.m. ET or so to find out the seeding, which determines exactly which teams are facing each other in the Playoff on New Year's Eve.

If Clemson remains No. 1 after squeaking past No. 10 North Carolina with the aid of a botched call by ACC refs, despite Alabama dominating No. 18 Florida for the majority of the SEC Championship and winning comfortably (Bama was outgaining Florida by 319 yards at one point, so, yeah), that still wouldn't tell us exactly which teams the Tigers and Tide would face next. That could happen, by the way, since the committee's said it's considered moving Bama to No. 1 for weeks and the Tide have more wins over winning teams than anybody else does.

Oklahoma entered the weekend at No. 3, then relaxed as No. 5 Michigan State beat No. 4 Iowa in all-time Big Ten fashion. That win, plus the general strength of MSU's schedule, could certainly inspire the committee to move the Spartans up to No. 3. However, the Spartans' lack of truly dominant performances could be a factor.

Think this is the best guess right now:

There's not much more drama in the next group, but bear with me. The Sugar Bowl is already set, Stanford's already in the Rose Bowl, and almost everyone else is close to being in place.

The main quarrel the committee will have to figure out is whether to drop previous No. 4 Iowa below No. 6 Ohio State for losing a close one to No. 5 Michigan State, a thing OSU also did. That will decide the Big Ten's Rose bid, as the bowl's indicating it'll take the highest-ranked non-Playoff team, no matter what.

I think the Buckeyes rank higher. OSU has six wins over .500-plus FBS teams; Iowa has four. OSU has the better scoring margin despite the tougher-ish schedule. The committee can't cite advanced stats in its discussions, but any computer rating you want to look up will tell you the Buckeyes were better this season.

That means Florida State, Houston, Iowa, and Notre Dame get sorted based largely on geography and partly on matchups. FSU's basically a lock for the Peach due to location, and let's say the committee splits up the two biggest brand names, FSU and ND, which played last year anyway.

And now for the real fun, which the Playoff committee has nothing directly to do with. For most of these matchups, it's all about individual bowls jostling to make enough money to justify doing this again for a few more years.

There's a lot more guessing in this group, but things shouldn't be too far off.