James Madison is in. Notre Dame is out.
The College Football Playoff saved the biggest drama for the final rankings, bumping the Sun Belt champions into the tournament over ACC champion Duke and Miami instead of the Fighting Irish for the final at-large spot.
In the end, the selection committee leaned on the Hurricanes’ head-to-head win against Notre Dame to open the season after ignoring that result throughout the rankings. This is a decision that ranks alongside Florida State’s exclusion in 2023 as the most controversial in playoff history.
The top four seeds are Indiana, Ohio State, Georgia and Texas Tech. The at-large picks are No. 5 Oregon, No. 6 Mississippi, No. 7 Texas A&M, No. 8 Oklahoma, No. 9 Alabama and No. 10 Miami. No. 11 Tulane and No. 12 James Madison round out the field.
If the favorites win at home in the opening round, the quarterfinal matchups would be Indiana against Oklahoma, Ohio State against Texas A&M, Georgia against Mississippi and Texas Tech against Oregon.
James Madison, Miami and the Irish lead the winners and losers from the bracket reveal:
Winners
Miami
The Hurricanes played their way into the field with a dominant four-game winning streak to end the regular season, which forced the committee to finally take into account the tiebreaker over Notre Dame. That they waited until this point will bring the committee under intense scrutiny, and deservedly so: Why not move Miami ahead earlier in the process to avoid this very situation? You have to think a major factor was Duke’s win and the possibility the ACC would be left out of the tournament entirely – even if the committee chairman said otherwise.
James Madison
James Madison was able to squeeze into the field after Duke beat Virginia in the ACC championship game, leading to a comparison of the one-loss Sun Belt champions against a five-loss Power Four winner. In the end, the Dukes lacked the Blue Devils’ résumé of wins, which included seven against Power Four competition, but had the record and level of game control to upend expectations and give the Group of Five two teams in the tournament.
Alabama
The Crimson Tide benefitted from the precedent set by the committee that says teams will not be docked for what happens in conference championship games. That’s obvious after Georgia handled Alabama with room to spare on Saturday night, avenging an earlier loss at home. While the Tide can exhale after a worrisome overnight wait, the bigger concern now is how this team has played since beating Tennessee early last month. Since then, the Tide haven’t looked the part of a playoff team, though the résumé was there to keep them in the bracket ahead of Notre Dame and Miami.
The Big 12
The conference couldn’t get two teams into the tournament after Texas Tech beat Brigham Young to knock out the Cougars. That’s the same as last season, when only Arizona State represented the Big 12. But this year feels very different nonetheless thanks to a deeper run of teams in the final rankings. In addition to the No. 4 Red Raiders and No. 12 BYU, the Big 12 placed No. 15 Utah, No. 17 Arizona and No. 21 Houston in the final top 25. The Big 12 had four teams in last year’s final rankings but only one inside the top 15.
Group of Five
This is a major look-at-us moment for the conferences that exist in the long shadow cast by the Power Four. While the American was assured of a playoff berth regardless of what happened in the championship game between Tulane and North Texas, there was little thought given to getting a second Group of Five team into the bracket until the final two weeks of the regular season. There needed to be a perfect storm of events to make this a possibility: JMU had to be perfect and the ACC had to be perfectly scrambled to open just the slightest path for another Group of Five team. While the Green Wave and Dukes will be underdogs in the opening round, this is a banner moment for the non-major conferences.
Losers
Notre Dame
There was almost no reason think Notre Dame would be the team left out after conference championship games, given Alabama’s pathetic showing against Georgia and the fact the Irish had been in front of Miami – as many as eight spots in front, in fact – throughout the entire ranking process. There’s also the idea that Notre Dame brings eyeballs and ratings to the playoff, making the Irish an even stronger candidate. That makes the fact they were bumped on Sunday extremely controversial, highly dramatic and definitely hard to explain. In the committee’s defense, the Irish did have a weaker résumé of wins than other at-large contenders. But Notre Dame was a powerhouse down the stretch and looked the part of a playoff team.
The ACC
While the ACC did get Miami into the tournament to avoid an embarrassing shutout, the conference also had just three teams in the rankings – Miami, No. 19 Virginia and No. 22 Georgia Tech – for the fewest of any Power Four league. The ACC is even lucky to a third team in the Yellow Jackets, who lost three of four in November and barely beat Boston College. Overall, Tech beat only three teams with a winning record and none with more than eight wins.
Brigham Young
The Cougars never factored into the at-large debate and were even dropped in the rankings after losing a second time to Texas Tech, even though a similar loss to Georgia didn’t move Alabama off of the No. 9 seed. BYU lost just twice, both to the Red Raiders, and had wins against East Carolina, Arizona, Utah, Iowa State, TCU and Cincinnati. That wasn’t enough to make the Cougars a legitimate contender.
Vanderbilt
The Commodores did their part, taking care of Tennessee in the season finale for the first 10-win finish in program history, but never came under any realistic consideration from the committee as an at-large candidate. Three teams would’ve earned the nod over Vanderbilt in Notre Dame, BYU and Texas. You can shift some of the blame to South Carolina, LSU and Missouri, which collapsed down the stretch after being ranked when meeting the Commodores. Still, look for quarterback Diego Pavia to be a Heisman Trophy finalist and potentially win the award, though he’s likely to finish second behind Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza.