Undefeated Indiana, along with one-loss Ohio State, Georgia and Texas Tech, are the top four seeds in the 12-team College Football Playoff, revealed Sunday.
Those four teams will have a first-round bye on the path to the national championship game, which will be played Jan. 19 in Miami Gardens, Fla.
Seeds five through 12 will play first-round games at the home of the highest seeds. Playing in those games will be:
No. 5 Oregon (11-1) vs. No. 12 James Madison (12-1)
No. 6 Ole Miss (11-1) vs. No. 11 Tulane (11-2)
No. 7 Texas A&M (11-1) vs. No. 10 Miami (10-2)
No. 8 Oklahoma (10-2) vs No. 9 Alabama (10-3)
Selecting the first four teams likely was one of the easiest decisions for the committee, which was faced with the difficult task of figuring out which top-flight teams to leave out — Alabama, Notre Dame, Miami or BYU — in a numbers crunch that will be sure to stoke a lingering debate among coaches and fans.
Notre Dame was left out in favor of Miami, while BYU also did not make the field.
The decisions could spark further tinkering of the playoff, which expanded to 12 teams in 2024 and made room for Group of Five teams to reward them for their seasons.
The field is made up of five teams from the Southeastern Conference, three from the Big Ten, one each from the Atlantic Coast Conference and Big 12, along with two Group of Five teams.
Alabama, Miami and Notre Dame each had been lobbying for inclusion into the playoff.
Alabama was crushed by Georgia 28-7 in the SEC title game on Saturday, but based its argument on being the only team among the three to be in the top 10 in strength of schedule and strength of record.
Miami based its case, in part, on its 27-24 win over Notre Dame in Week 1, despite not qualifying to play in the Atlantic Coast Conference title game.
Notre Dame won its past 10 games after losing its first two to CFP teams — Miami and Texas A&M — by a combined total of four points.
Hunter Yurachek, the athletic director at Arkansas and head of the CFP committee, shared the group’s thinking as to why Notre Dame (10-2) and BYU (11-2) were left out.
In the CFP rankings issued last Tuesday, the group had Alabama at No. 9, Notre Dame at No. 10, BYU at No. 11 and Miami at No. 12.
The first domino fell when Texas Tech manhandled BYU 34-7 in the Big 12 championship game. The Red Raiders won their regular-season meeting 29-7 last month.
“We felt like the way BYU performed in their championship game — a second loss to Texas Tech in a similar fashion — was worthy of Miami moving ahead of them in the rankings,” Yurachek said. “And once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody had been hungry for with Notre Dame and Miami.”
He continued:
“You look at those two teams on paper and they’re almost equal — their schedule strength, their common opponents, the results against their common opponents. But the one metric we had to fall back on again was the head-to-head. We had charged the committee members to go back and watch that game again — the Miami-Notre Dame game — because it was so far back, and we got some interesting debate from our coaches on what that game looked like as we watched it.
“And with that in mind we gave Miami the nod over Notre Dame into that 10 spot.”
Indiana (13-1) will face the Alabama-Oklahoma winner on New Year’s Day at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif, while Ohio State (12-1) will play the Miami-Texas A&M winner at the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Eve in Arlington, Texas.
Texas Tech (12-1) will face the James Madison-Oregon winner at the Orange Bowl in Miami Gardens, Fla., on New Year’s Day, while Georgia (12-1) meets the Tulane-Ole Miss winner at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, also on New Year’s Day.
Notre Dame finished No. 11 in the rankings and BYU at No. 12, but they were dropped to make room for the Group of Five teams: No. 20 Tulane and No. 24 James Madison.
Here are the CFP final top 25 rankings:
1 Indiana
2. Ohio State
3. Georgia
4. Texas Tech
5. Oregon
6. Ole Miss
7. Texas A&M
8. Oklahoma
9. Alabama
10. Miami
11. Notre Dame
12. BYU
13. Texas
14. Vanderbilt
15. Utah
16. Southern California
17. Arizona
18. Michigan
19. Vanderbilt
20. Tulane
21. Houston
22. Georgia Tech
23. Iowa
24. James Madison
25. North Texas
–Field Level Media
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