(AP) – Nobody paying attention over the past 24 months would be surprised to see Indiana leading the way into this year\u2019s College Football Playoff.<\/p>\n
But anyone paying attention over the last 24 hours knew the only sure thing beyond the Hoosiers was that the playoff selection committee was destined to get picked apart when it released the pairings for this season\u2019s 12-team bracket on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Most of that second-guessing came from Notre Dame, which was passed over in favor of Alabama and Miami for two of the bracket\u2019s bubble spots. The Fighting Irish dropped two notches in the CFP rankings over the last two weeks, to No. 11, despite a 10-game winning streak, winning their finale by 29 points and simply sitting on the couch Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no explanation that could possibly be given to explain the outcome,\u201d Irish athletic director Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo Sports, hours after the bracket was revealed and Notre Dame said it would skip bowl season altogether. \u201cWe feel like the playoff was stolen from our student-athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Notre Dame\u2019s loss was Alabama\u2019s gain. The Crimson Tide didn\u2019t move an inch the CFP rankings despite a 28-7 loss to No. 3 Georgia that looked worse than that.<\/p>\n
No. 10 Miami didn\u2019t play, either, but the Hurricanes\u2019 27-24 win over Notre Dame in Week 1 played a role once the teams were grouped right next to each other after BYU lost its game on Saturday and dropped one spot.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone can spin the metrics in favor of the team or teams they support,\u201d committee chairman Hunter Yurachek said. \u201cYou\u2019re always going to have controversy. That\u2019s why we debated for so long, 9, 10 and 11, into the early-morning hours, and woke up at sunrise to do the same thing \u2014 make sure we got it right.\u201d<\/p>\n
The committee\u2019s other key decision was choosing James Madison over Duke for the final spot. The selection left the Atlantic Coast Conference champion out of the mix, but didn\u2019t fully exclude the ACC because Miami made it.<\/p>\n
The rest of the field includes No. 2 seed Ohio State, No. 3 Georgia and No. 4 Texas Tech, all of which joined Indiana in getting first-round byes.<\/p>\n
The Hoosiers moved up to No. 1 with their 13-10 win over the Buckeyes on Saturday \u2014 their first Big Ten title since 1967 \u2014 and the teams\u2019 1-2 positioning sets up a possible rematch in the national title game Jan. 19.<\/p>\n
Then it was No. 5 seed Oregon, followed by Mississippi, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Alabama, Miami, American champion Tulane and James Madison of the Sun Belt.<\/p>\n
The playoffs start Dec. 19 with No. 9 Alabama at No. 8 Oklahoma. On Dec. 20, it\u2019s No. 10 Miami at No. 7 Texas A&M, No. 11 Tulane at No. 6 Ole Miss and No. 12 James Madison at No. 5 Oregon.<\/p>\n
The winners move to the quarterfinals, which will feature Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl on New Year\u2019s Eve, then Texas Tech in the Orange Bowl, Indiana in the Rose Bowl and Georgia in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1.<\/p>\n
A costly miss for Notre Dame<\/p>\n
It was a particularly costly and painful snub for the Fighting Irish.<\/p>\n
They lost their first two games of the season \u2014 one to Miami, the other to Texas A&M \u2014 by a combined four points. They did not play a tough schedule the rest of the way; it was ranked 44th, compared to sixth for Alabama but 45th for Miami. But the Irish won all those games easily.<\/p>\n
It also hurts the pocketbook. Where conferences split $4 million for each team they place into the first round, Notre Dame \u2014 as an independent \u2014 would have banked the full amount for itself.<\/p>\n
Yurachek said the committee had not previously considered Miami\u2019s Aug. 31 win over Notre Dame because there were always other teams in the mix, namely Alabama and BYU. But when BYU lost, the Irish and Hurricanes ended up right next to each other, which made that Miami win more important. Yurachek directed the committee to go back and rewatch it.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally, how Miami\u2019s defense dominated Notre Dame\u2019s running game, where for the rest of the season, their running game dominated most of the teams they played,\u201d Yurachek said when asked what the committee saw in that game.<\/p>\n
Alabama back in after snub last year<\/p>\n
Alabama (10-3) is in despite three losses. Those who believe the Tide deserve it will look at these factors:<\/p>\n
\u2014 An eight-game winning streak after a shocking 14-point, season-opening loss to Florida State that included a 24-21 victory at Georgia for a season split while, for instance, BYU lost both its games against Texas Tech.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Ignoring the above, there was the \u201cyou can\u2019t lose ground for playing in the title game\u201d argument. Last year, Alabama had three losses and was passed over for SMU, which was coming off a loss in the ACC title game. Using the same logic, someone other than the Tide needed to go this time.<\/p>\n
Duke\u2019s argument falls on deaf ears<\/p>\n
Duke tried to make a compelling argument that its seven wins over Power Four teams, including the victory over Virginia in the ACC title game, made it more deserving than James Madison for that fifth and final automatic spot for conference champs.<\/p>\n
But the Blue Devils had five losses. And Virginia was ranked four (now nine) spots lower than Miami, the ACC\u2019s best team by many measurements.<\/p>\n
James Madison\u2019s playoff game against a mega-team from a mega-conference \u2014 Oregon \u2014 will suss out whether teams like that should be playing for the title.<\/p>\n
History, however, might look back on Duke\u2019s win if league title games are ever eliminated from the schedule due to their growing irrelevance. Other than eliminating BYU (but not Alabama) and flip-flopping Indiana and Ohio State, this year\u2019s set of games in the Power Four meant next to nothing.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a> and here<\/a> (AP News mobile app). AP college football: apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll<\/a> and apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/a><\/p>\n Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(AP) – Nobody paying attention over the past 24 months would be surprised to see Indiana leading the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[42676,42674,10241,24054,143,42675,123,125,124],"class_list":["post-75377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-cfb-bracket","tag-college-football-bracket","tag-college-football-playoff","tag-college-football-playoff-bracket","tag-college-football","tag-football-bracket","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}