One of the hottest teams in the country over the last two-plus months will not be in the College Football Playoff.
Notre Dame, despite a 10-game winning streak, was left on the outside looking in. Alabama received the ninth seed and Miami was given No. 10. The Crimson Tide have been incredibly shaky for the last five weeks, barely beating SEC also-rans LSU, Auburn and South Carolina, losing at home to punchless Oklahoma and getting crushed on Saturday in the SEC championship game. Miami, which didn’t even reach the ACC title game, got in on the strength of its Week 1 win over the Irish.
Notre Dame dropped two spots in the last two weeks, even though it won its last game in blowout fashion over Stanford. Miami leapfrogged them on Sunday.
The other question was the final automatic bid for a conference champion after five-loss Duke upset Virginia in the ACC title game. The committee gave that spot to Sun Belt winner James Madison, making it two Group of Five winners in the field, along with AAC champion Tulane.
In the opening round, Alabama will meet No. 8 Oklahoma and Miami visits No. 7 Texas A&M. No. 11 Tulane faces sixth-seeded Ole Miss and No. 12 James Madison will go to fifth-seeded Oregon.
There weren’t any other major surprises. Indiana, coming off its first Big Ten title, was No. 1 as expected, followed by Big Ten runner-up and defending national champion Ohio State and SEC champion Georgia,
Texas Tech, the Big 12 winner, received the final bye after knocking off BYU for the second time in the conference championship game on Saturday afternoon.
The third and final Big Ten team selected was Oregon, and the Ducks landed the top at-large spot at No. 5.
Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Oklahoma were seeded six through eight and as a result got opening-round home games on campus.
