What lessons were uncovered on the first 12-team College Football Playoff field? Snubs, surprises, and lessons learned

On Sunday afternoon, the College Football Playoff revealed its first 12-team bracket, marking the beginning of a new era for the sport’s premier postseason competition.

Oregon, the Big Ten champion, was awarded the No. First overall seed, followed by SEC champion Georgia at No. two seeds. Since Mountain West champion Boise State was the conference’s third-ranked team, the Broncos received the No. 3 seed, and Arizona State, the Big 12 champion, came in at No. 4. . According to playoff procedure, the top four seeds—all conference winners—will each get a bye to the quarterfinals.

The best at-large team was Texas, which came in at No. Ohio State, Penn State, and Notre Dame came in that order, with the fifth seed. No seeds. Austin, State College, South Bend, and Columbus will all host first-round games on campus from 5-8.

ACC champion Clemson earned the No. 1 seed, while the final at-large teams into the bracket were Tennessee, Indiana, and SMU. Twelveth seed as the fifth conference winner. Despite a 9-3 Alabama team with three top-25 victories, SMU lost to Clemson by three points in the ACC championship, so the CFP selection committee decided to keep them in the running. In the first year of the 12-team bracket, that was the most contentious choice.

The College Football Playoffs’ first 12-team bracket has been announced. Observe who is in and who is not.

What you should know is as follows.

The “snubs.”.

The fact that SMU qualified for the tournament without defeating any of the top 25 teams in the committee has infuriated Alabama supporters. And even though that’s true, wins versus. The committee had access to more metrics than just the top 25, and the SMU-Alabama selection involved much more than just these two teams. A decision regarding the future of conference championship games had to be made by the selection committee. The committee would need to severely penalize an 11-2 SMU team that participated in the ACC championship — an extra game — in order to send an Alabama team into the field with two losses to .500 teams (including a 24-3 loss to Oklahoma just two weeks ago), while the Crimson Tide sat idle because they were not eligible for their league’s championship game. Undoubtedly, the final decision was influenced by SMU’s performance against Clemson. Committee members were undoubtedly impacted by the ferocious comeback that put the Tigers ahead by a 56-yard walk-off field goal in the last minute of play. It was difficult to watch that game and not think SMU deserved to be in the playoffs.

Alabama maintained that its losses were mitigated by its demanding schedule and that its top performances—which included three victories in the top 25—proved it could defeat any team in the nation. SMU claimed that it lost a game that wasn’t necessary for the teams it would be compared to to play. After selecting to start quarterback Kevin Jennings, Mustangs coach Rhett Lashlee also noted that SMU had an undefeated regular season.

However, I didn’t mind the committee’s decision to put SMU ahead of Alabama in the final bracket. This season, the Tide were incredibly erratic, and they performed especially poorly when traveling. Their exclusion is solely their own fault; before that crushing defeat to Oklahoma, they were virtually guaranteed to make the field. In the meantime, the committee made a significant point by continuing to play SMU even after losing in the conference championship game. A team that had performed so well during the regular season that it was forced to play an extra game while its peers sat at home was not going to be punished by this group. By disqualifying SMU for competing in and losing its conference championship game, this selection committee did not intend to discourage participation in league title games.

No coach would ever want to play in a conference championship game again if the committee had disqualified SMU from the field after it had ranked higher than Indiana and Alabama, both of which were idle, five days prior. To get around it, teams would try to play games in the final moments or sit starters. Additionally, the value of games that generate income for the leagues themselves would be significantly diminished. SMU was selected by the committee because it upheld the status quo.

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06:35.

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What was the final bracket message sent by the committee?

Joshua Perry and Nicole Auerbach talk about the committee’s main points in its final bracket release, such as the importance of conference winners and the preservation of the status quo.

The most unexpected.

I wasn’t too shocked that the selection committee chose SMU over Alabama because I had projected the school to be superior. Although it wasn’t shocking to me that Boise State continued to lead Arizona State, it was still cool to see the Group of 5 champion ranked higher than two different Power 4 champions. Prior to their victories over the top-25, the Broncos were five spots ahead of the Sun Devils in the penultimate rankings. I doubt I could have imagined in my wildest dreams that the winner of the Group of 5 would receive the No. In the first year of an expanded field, three seeds are planted. That has a significant impact on the future credibility of G5 Playoff candidates.

In terms of ranking, the committee’s choice to order seeds No. was the most intriguing. 5- 7. The team ranked Texas as the bottom. 5 despite having no top-25 victories on its record following an overtime loss to Georgia (playing its backup quarterback for the majority of the second half). I had questioned how the committee would respond to Texas losing to the same team twice, including in the (additional) conference championship game that other at-large teams would not be participating in. Notre Dame, cough. Ohio State coughed. In the end, the committee only moved Texas up one spot in its rankings, giving the Longhorns the top seed available for an at-large team. Texas was favored by this group. They didn’t have a lot of meat on that schedule, but that didn’t matter because the Longhorns had been ranked highly the entire season, even though teams like Ohio State had much better records.

Penn State, meanwhile, fell short against No. a thrilling, entertaining Big Ten championship game, defeating Oregon by eight points. The Longhorns’ loss in the conference championship game only caused the Nittany Lions to drop one spot in the rankings. In essence, Georgia leapfrogged both teams up to the No. two seed lines. . Even though Penn State only had one victory in the top 25 on its record, the committee still thought highly of this team despite its losses to two of the top teams in the nation.

The committee made an intriguing decision by keeping both Texas and Penn State above 11-1 Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish finished the season as one of the most dominant teams in the country, but they also suffered the worst defeat of any CFP contender and only managed one victory in the top 25. The Irish are a more dominant and reliable team, so I could argue that they should be ranked higher than Texas and/or Penn State. However, I can also understand the committee’s desire to rank the two teams with better losses above the one that lost to Northern Illinois. The committee was prepared to overlook the loss, but not entirely forget it. In the end, everything works out because all three teams get to host first-round games.

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In CFP, Georgia and Texas have the simplest routes to success.

Joshua Perry and Nicole Auerbach talk about which teams have the best chance of winning the College Football Playoffs, as well as how Georgia’s prospects may be affected by Carson Beck’s health.

Knowledge gained.

The selection committee was hesitant to totally alter the current college football system. In order for conference championship games to continue, it did not want to penalize the teams that participated. They are valuable to the leagues themselves, and no one would ever be encouraged to play in them again if SMU had been eliminated from the bracket for participating in and losing one.

We also learned that the committee was prepared to overlook a comparatively poor conference schedule from Texas, Penn State, Indiana, and other universities. A few weeks ago, Warde Manuel, the chair of the CFP committee, stated that teams are only allowed to play the opponents they have been assigned. We’re used to expecting the chair of the selection committee to wax poetic about schedule strength, so that caused a lot of eyebrows to raise at the time. But in a time when leagues with 16–18 teams no longer employ divisions, it’s a truly intriguing statement. For no fault of their own, schools in the same league have radically different schedules. Additionally, this committee determined that Indiana would not face consequences for not playing the same teams as Ohio State. Texas was not penalized for playing a much weaker SEC schedule than Georgia.

The committee also appeared to be conscious of the stories that surrounded its ultimate choices. Much of the discussion surrounding the bracket would have focused on SEC commissioner Greg Sankey’s influence on the committee and the CFP itself if Alabama had qualified as a three-loss at-large team. At the school and SEC levels, commissioners have already criticized the committee for alleged brand bias, which I would contend contributed to Florida State’s 2023 rejection. This whole discussion would have become even more poisonous if the public and the representatives of the schools themselves had lost more trust in the committee as a result of its selection of a well-known institution that appeared to receive an endless supply of mulligans.

The 2024–25 College Football Playoff schedule is available here.

what happens next. .

Nevertheless, SEC country will continue to file complaints. Sankey will undoubtedly be upset with the committee for not compensating his teams for such demanding schedules (despite the fact that Alabama lost to teams that finished the season with a .500 but outperformed the top SEC teams). Regardless of the group’s composition or the kind of season the top SEC teams are actually having, Sankey has always been sure that SEC teams would be respected by the selection committee. However, he and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti also warned the committee a few months ago that they would be keeping an eye on how the 13-member group seeded and assessed their teams. Even though Ole Miss and South Carolina were also eliminated, Sankey will not be pleased that one of his teams was the first out.

That could result in Sankey advocating for CFP reform before the 2026 CFP contract, or perhaps even the following season. Does Sankey support the Big Ten’s proposal to have up to three or four multiple automatic qualifiers for the Big Ten and SEC, which would eliminate the need for human committee members to make decisions? If the top four SEC teams were guaranteed a spot in the bracket each year, Sankey wouldn’t have to publicly support his teams as he did this month. If coaches were not evaluated by a committee that obsesses over the number of losses in the loss column, they would also be less likely to gripe about difficult schedules.

Greg Byrne, the athletic director for Alabama, stated on Sunday night that he would review Alabama’s nonconference scheduling strategy going forward, despite the fact that the Tide’s two SEC losses prevented them from competing. In essence, he is stating that if scheduling other Power 4 teams in the nonconference could exhaust you before a challenging SEC schedule, there is no point in doing so. However, in a league that only plays eight conference games, this seems to be a talking point that is gaining traction. I would argue that big nonconference games could help offset a poor SEC loss (say, to Vanderbilt) later in the season. Although I agree that teams like Texas and Penn State didn’t seem to suffer this season due to their lack of significant victories, I believe Alabama’s problems stem from its own conference rather than nonconference scheduling. Knowing that the league schedules for everyone would get more difficult, the SEC added Texas and Oklahoma. They were included because they are well-known companies with a track record of success, which raised the SEC’s overall worth. The league’s scheduling and organizational structure are the real problem if you’re upset that the schedule is so difficult that you might lose to a team in the middle of the SEC pack.

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