Notre Dame left out of College Football Playoff, Indiana gets No. 1 overall seed

admin-cdn10 hours ago

0 0 3 minutes read

Notre Dame left out of College Football Playoff, Indiana gets No. 1 overall seed

(WNDU) – Notre Dame has been left out of the College Football Playoff while Indiana received the No. 1 overall seed.

The CFP selection committee gave Alabama and Miami the nod over the Irish in the final rankings released on Sunday afternoon.

Notre Dame had been sitting in the CFP field pretty firmly until the Irish (10-2) were dropped from No. 9 to No. 10 in the rankings revealed this past Tuesday night.

Now, Notre Dame is on the outside looking in as the first team out of the playoff.

It’s a brutal blow for the Irish, who turned an 0-2 start to the season around with 10 straight wins by 10 or more points. Their two losses were by a combined four points to two teams who are in the CFP field (No. 7 Texas A&M and No. 10 Miami).

Even though Notre Dame was ranked higher than Miami (10-2) for the previous five weeks prior to Sunday’s selection, the committee ultimately decided Miami’s season-opening win over the Irish was too much to overcome and flipped their rankings.

During Sunday’s bracket reveal show on ESPN, CFP selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek explained the committee’s decision to give Miami the nod over Notre Dame.

“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. Once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody had been hungering for with Notre Dame and Miami,” Yurachek said. “And you look at those two teams on paper, and they are almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, their results against their common opponents. But the one metric we had to fall back on, again, was the head-to-head.”

The committee also decided not to punish the Crimson Tide (10-3) for their one-sided loss in the SEC Championship Game to Georgia on Saturday, keeping them at No. 9. This came despite other teams in the rankings getting punished and dropping for their losses in their respective conference championship games.

Indiana gets No. 1 overall seed

There was much less drama for the Hoosiers (13-0), who claimed the No. 1 overall seed in the College Football Playoff after taking down previous No. 1 Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game on Saturday night.

It continues a remarkable turnaround for Indiana, which had the most losses in major college football history prior to head coach Curt Cignetti’s arrival two years ago. Now, the Hoosiers have back-to-back CFP appearances and are very much a national title contender after taking down the defending champs.

With the No. 1 ranking, Indiana gets a first round bye and will host the winner of No. 8 Oklahoma (10-2) and No. 9 Alabama in the quarterfinals in the Rose Bowl.

The rest of the field

The bracket consists of the five highest-ranked conference champions, plus the next seven highest-ranked teams.

In addition to the No. 1 Hoosiers, Ohio State (No. 2), Georgia (No. 3) and Texas Tech (No. 4) all earned first-round byes.

The schools seeded No. 5-8 (Oregon, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Oklahoma) will host first-round games on their campuses.

The Ducks will host Sun Belt conference champion James Madison (No. 12), who got the nod in the final CFP bracket over five-loss ACC champion Duke. The winner moves on to face Texas Tech in the Orange Bowl.

The Rebels will host American conference champion Tulane (No. 11), with the winner facing Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.

Texas A&M and Miami, the two teams who beat Notre Dame this season, will meet in College Station, with the winner facing Ohio State in the quarterfinals in the Cotton Bowl.

The playoffs start Dec. 19-20 with first round games. The final is set for Jan. 19 outside of Miami.

Here’s a full look at the final College Football Playoff rankings: