After being on the outside last year, Alabama and Miami can breathe a sigh of relief as the Crimson Tide and Hurricanes were the last big-time teams selected — ahead of Notre Dame — to participate in the 12-team College Football Playoff field, which was announced Sunday.
Undefeated Big Ten champion Indiana (13-0) earned the top seed, while two Group of Five teams — American Conference champion Tulane (11-2) and Sun Belt victor James Madison (12-1) — were selected for the second iteration of the 12-team CFP field.
The Hoosiers, who won their first Big Ten title since 1945 with a 13-10 win over Ohio State on Saturday, will receive a bye in the first round, along with the No. 2 seed Buckeyes (12-1), No. 3 Georgia (12-1) and No. 4 Texas Tech (12-1).
12-Team CFP Bracket Set‼️
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The Fighting Irish (10-2) were the first team left out, and Miami (10-2) earned the final spot after moving up two spots to No. 10, after the 12-person CFP selection committee ultimately decided that head-to-head scores ultimately matter.
The Hurricanes defeated the Fighting Irish 27-24 in their opener Aug. 31 in Miami, but did not advance Notre Dame until the final seedings on Sunday. Miami is the top-ranked team from the ACC, but has not qualified for the league’s championship game.
CFP Selection Committee Chairman Hunter Yurachek said a head-to-head win for Miami wasn’t a deciding factor until BYU’s Hurricanes jumped up in the CFP rankings and were evaluated alongside the Irish.
“Once we got Miami ahead of BYU, we had that side-by-side comparison that everyone was hungry for,” said Yuraczek, who said he encouraged committee members to go back and watch the Notre Dame-Miami game from Labor Day weekend. “If you look at these two teams on paper, they are roughly equal in the strength of their schedule, their common rivals, and the results against common rivals.
“But the only measure we had to rely on again was direct confrontation.”
BYU dropped from No. 11 to No. 12 in the committee’s rankings after losing 34-7 to Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game on Saturday.
First-round games will be played at the campus sites of the higher-ranked teams.
Miami will play No. 7 Texas A&M in a first-round game on Dec. 20 (12 noon ET, ESPN/ABC). The Aggies opened as 5.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook.
It is the first time that two Group of Five champions will be included in the 12-team tournament. James Madison, who officially moved from the FCS to the FBS in 2022, will play No. 5 seed Oregon in a first-round game on Dec. 20 (7:30 p.m. ET, TNT/HBO Max).
Tulane is the No. 11 seed and will play No. 6 Ole Miss in the first round on Dec. 20 (3:30 p.m. ET, TNT/HBO Max). The Rebels beat the visiting Green Wave 45-10 at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on September 20. Ole Miss will play Tulane this time without coach Lane Kiffin, who left for LSU. He was replaced by former defensive coordinator Pete Golding.
The Ducks (21.5 points) and Rebels (16.5 points) opened as overwhelming favorites to win their first-round games via DraftKings.
Alabama’s inclusion as the SEC’s fifth team is sure to spark heated debate after the Crimson Tide’s failure in the SEC Championship game. Georgia held Alabama to minus 3 yards and 209 yards of offense in a 28-7 win, but the Tide remained ninth in the CFP rankings.
The Crimson Tide will play a first-round game against No. 8 seed Oklahoma on Dec. 19 (8 p.m. ET, ESPN/ABC). The Theooners opened as a 1.5-point favorite on DraftKings, but the line quickly moved to Alabama as a 1.5-point favorite.
Alabama coach Calen DeBoer and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey argued that the Tide should not be penalized for its loss in the SEC Championship game, while other teams under consideration were sitting at home on Saturday.
“This might be the best team in the country right now,” Sankey said of Georgia. “And you have to remember that Alabama went to Athens, won a game, won a number of other seeded games, played a tough schedule. That’s a bonus tonight. It’s not a penalty for playing in that game.”
Notre Dame lost its first two games to Miami and Texas A&M by a combined four points. The Irish then won their next 10 games by an average of 29.7 points, but it wasn’t enough to push them past Alabama or Miami for the final spot.
The Tide had the eighth-best power record and 11th-best strength of schedule in the FBS, according to ESPN Analytics, with wins over four ranked teams (Georgia, Vanderbilt, Missouri and Tennessee) when Alabama played them. The Tide ended Georgia’s 33-game home winning streak with a 24-21 win on September 27.
However, Alabama also suffered its worst loss among the teams under consideration by the selection committee — a stunning 31-17 defeat to Florida State in the opener. The Seminoles finished 5-7.
“The strength of their schedule was the highest among the top 11,” Juracek said. “We felt that, despite their performance yesterday in the conference championship game, they deserved to stay in ninth place,” he added.
With Duke beating Virginia in overtime in the ACC Championship game on Saturday, the selection committee elected to take the two Group of Five champions — Tulane and James Madison — over the Blue Devils (8-5).
“These two fundamental questions get lost behind computer algorithms and ‘game predictions’ that obscure human decision-making: Will an undefeated team in the Sun Belt, which has only four teams with a winning record, win seven games in the ACC? Would a team that won seven games in the ACC, which had 11 teams with a winning record (we played seven) go undefeated in the Sun Belt?” Duke coach Manny Diaz told ESPN on Sunday.
He added: “We are aware of the setbacks we face that have put us at the mercy of the committee, but anyone who really watches and studies football knows the real answer to the two questions above.”
Juraczyk said Sunday that keeping the ACC champion out of the field has no impact on Miami’s inclusion as an at-large team.
“[That] “It had no effect at all,” Juracek said. “Our responsibility as a selection committee is to rank the top 25 teams, and then you extract the top five conference champions and the seven at-large teams, and that’s what we did to fill out the bracket. “Miami ended up being one of the seventh-best teams ever, and that’s why they’re in the playoffs.”
The quarter-finals and semi-finals will be played in traditional New Year’s six-bowl matches.
Ohio State will play the winner of Miami-Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Eve (7:30 p.m., ESPN). The New Year’s Day lineup will include Texas Tech against the winner of JMU-Oregon in the Orange Bowl (noon ET, ESPN), Indiana against the winner of Alabama-Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl (4 p.m. ET, ESPN) and Georgia against the winner of Tulane-Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl (8 p.m. ET, ESPN).
Both the Fiesta Bowl (Jan. 8, 7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) and the Peach Bowl (Jan. 9, 7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) will host semifinal games.
A national champion will be crowned Jan. 19 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).
Bowling season begins Dec. 13 at noon with the Cricket Celebration Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
In all, 36 bowl games are scheduled, plus 11 CFP games, and 42 of those games will be broadcast on the ESPN/ABC family of networks.
ESPN’s Andrea Adelson contributed to this report.