Nobody paying attention for the past 24 months would be surprised to see Indiana – yes, Indiana – leading the way into this year’s College Football Playoff.
But anyone paying attention over the last 24 hours knew the only sure thing beyond that was that the selection committee that set this 12-team bracket was destined to get destroyed when it released the pairings Sunday.
All that second-guessing and vitriol will be coming from Notre Dame, which was passed over for Alabama and Miami for two bubble spots in the bracket. The Fighting Irish dropped two notches in the rankings over the last two weeks despite a 10-game winning streak, winning their finale by 29 points and sitting on the couch Saturday.
Alabama didn’t move at all in the CFP rankings after a 28-7 loss to Georgia that looked worse than that, but that the committee didn’t count that against the Tide in keeping with a hazy policy that refrains from penalizing teams for playing in their league title game.
Miami didn’t play either, but the Hurricanes’ win over Notre Dame in Week 1 played a role in their move once the teams were grouped right next to each other after BYU lost its game on Saturday. Committee chairman Hunter Yurachek said he directed the committee to rewatch Miami’s win over Notre Dame way back on Aug. 31.
“Once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, we had the side-by-side comparison that eveyrone had been hungy for,” Yurachek said.
The committee’s other key decision was choosing James Madison over Duke for the final spot, a selection that left the Atlantic Coast Conference champion out of the mix, but didn’t fully exclude the ACC because of Miami’s move into the bracket.
Yurachek insisted that including the ACC — one of the Power Four conferences — in the playoff in some form played no role in the deliberations.
The rest of the field includes No. 2 Ohio State, No. 3 Georgia and No. 4 Texas Tech, which joined Indiana in getting first-round byes. Then it was No. 5 Oregon, followed by Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Alabama, Miami, Tulane and James Madison.
The playoffs start Dec. 19-20 with first round games: James Madison at Oregon; Tulane at Misssissippi; Miami at Texas A&M; and Alabama at Oklahoma.
The final is set for Jan. 19 outside of Miami.
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