Overview
- The 12-team College Football Playoff bracket and final top 25 will be announced at noon ET, with four first-round byes and guaranteed spots for the five highest-ranked conference champions.
- Indiana secured the projected No. 1 seed by beating Ohio State 13-10, Georgia dominated Alabama 28-7 for the SEC title, and Texas Tech routed BYU 34-7 to lock in the Big 12 crown.
- A three-loss at-large has never made the CFP, yet several outlets predict Alabama could still get in despite the SEC title game defeat, citing past inclusion of teams that lost league championships.
- Miami’s head-to-head win over Notre Dame complicates the final at-large slotting, with the committee chair reiterating head-to-head is only one datapoint and most applicable when teams are ranked adjacent.
- Tulane and James Madison are widely forecast as automatic qualifiers, while Duke’s five-loss ACC title raises the possibility the ACC is shut out and BYU’s loss appears to end its at-large hopes.