Final CFP Rankings: Alabama Gets In, Notre Dame Left Out, Miami Represents The ACC

The College Football Playoff rankings have been released, and boy do we have some frustrated folks around the sport. 

After a chaotic Saturday that saw BYU and Virginia fall, along with Georgia throttling Alabama in the SEC championship, there were plenty of nervous folks in Tuscaloosa, South Bend and Miami over the past twelve hours. 

We all thought it would be a pretty easy debate between CFP committee members if Alabama would've just lost a close game to Georgia. But, it was the way in which the Tide' lost that created a wild conversation until the rankings were finally released. 

Notre Dame had been ahead of Miami over the past five weeks in the rankings, but the Hurricanes jumped the Fighting Irish in the final CFP field, which is going to lead to some interesting questions. 

Simply put, this has been the worst playoff committee since its inception. 

"Once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, we had that side by side comparison and you look at those two teams on paper and they are almost equal. The one metric we had to fall back on was head to head," CFP chair Hunter Yurachek said during the rankings show. 

Also, Alabama did not drop a spot after losing to Georgia in the SEC Championship

CFP Projections: Alabama’s Fate In Question After Loss, BYU Collapses, Duke Wins ACC And How About Indiana

Would the committee actually leave Alabama out after suffering its third loss of the season in a title game? After a wild few weeks of ‘data points’ from the CFP committee, which made us all wonder how those teams were ranked, we finally got the final answer this afternoon. 

Alabama Makes The Playoff, Miami Is In The 12-Team Field

• No. 1 Indiana
• No. 2 Ohio State
• No. 3 Georgia
• No. 4 Texas Tech
• No. 5 Oregon
• No. 6 Ole Miss
• No. 7 Texas A&M
• No. 8 Oklahoma
• No. 9 Alabama
• No. 10 Miami
• No. 11 Tulane
• No. 12 Notre Dame

The Group of Five will be well-represented, thanks to Tulane winning the AAC and James Madison winning the Sun Belt conference. Even though Duke won the ACC title on Saturday night in overtime against No. 17 Virginia, they were not ranked high enough for the committee to put them in. 

Final CFP rankings released. Alabama in, Notre Dame is out

First Round On-Campus CFP Matchups

The opening games will start on December 19th, with one game. The following day, the CFP will have three games, starting at 12 p.m. ET, with these being played on-campus. 

• No. 12. James Madison @ No. 5 Oregon  (Dec. 20, 7:30 pm ET)
• No. 11 Tulane @ No. 6 Ole Miss (Dec. 20, 3:30 pm ET)
• No. 10 Miami @ No. 7 Texas A&M ( Dec. 20,
• No. 9 Alabama @  No. 8 Oklahoma

There you have it, argue away. What a wild regular season of college football. 

Bring on the Playoff!