The weekend before Thanksgiving often feels like the calm before the storm in college football. Saturday was different. The expanded College Football Playoff turned it into a tempest with postseason implications from the home of the Super Bowl champion Chiefs in Kansas City to the House that Ruth Built in the Bronx.

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.