After being on the outside looking in last year, Alabama and Miami can breathe a sigh of relief as the Crimson Tide and Hurricanes were the last at-large teams selected — ahead of Notre Dame — for the 12-team College Football Playoff field announced Sunday.
Undefeated Big Ten champion Indiana (13-0) earned the No. 1 seed, while two Group of 5 teams — American Conference champ Tulane (11-2) and Sun Belt victor James Madison (12-1) — were selected for the second iteration of the 12-team CFP field.
The Hoosiers, which won its first Big Ten title since 1945 with a 13-10 victory against Ohio State on Saturday, will receive a first-round bye, along with the No. 2 seeded Buckeyes (12-1), No. 3 Georgia (12-1) and No. 4 Texas Tech (12-1).
THE 12-TEAM CFP BRACKET IS SET‼️
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— ESPN (@espn) December 7, 2025
The Fighting Irish (10-2) were the first team left out of the field, and Miami (10-2) received the last at-large spot after moving up two spots to No. 10, after the 12-person CFP selection committee ultimately decided head-to-head results mattered in the end.
The Hurricanes defeated the Fighting Irish 27-24 in their Aug. 31 opener in Miami, but they hadn’t been ranked ahead of Notre Dame until the final rankings Sunday. Miami is the highest-ranked team from the ACC, but it didn’t qualify for the league’s championship game.
CFP selection committee chairman Hunter Yurachek said Miami’s head-to-head victory wasn’t a deciding factor until the Hurricanes jumped BYU in the CFP rankings and were evaluated side-by-side with the Irish.
“Once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody had been hungering for,” said Yurachek, who said he encouraged committee members to go back and watch the Notre Dame-Miami game from Labor Day weekend as the committee debated the two teams into Sunday morning. “You look at those two teams on paper, and they are almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, the results against common opponents.
“But the one metric we had to fall back on, again, was the head to head.”
BYU fell from 11th to 12th in the committee’s rankings after losing 34-7 to Texas Tech in Saturday’s Big 12 title game.
The first-round games will be played at the campus sites of the higher-seeded teams.
Miami will play at No. 7 Texas A&M in a Dec. 20 first-round game (12 p.m. ET, ESPN/ABC). The Aggies opened at 5.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook.
It’s the first time two Group of Five champions have been included in the 12-team field. James Madison, which officially moved from the FCS to FBS in 2022, will play at No. 5 seed Oregon in a first-round game on Dec. 20 (7:30 p.m. ET, TNT/HBO Max).
Tulane is the No. 11 seed and will play at No. 6 Ole Miss in the first round on Dec. 20 (3:30 p.m. ET, TNT/HBO Max). The Rebels walloped the visiting Green Wave 45-10 at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Sept. 20. Ole Miss will play Tulane this time without coach Lane Kiffin, who left for LSU. He was replaced by former defensive coordinator Pete Golding.
The Ducks (21.5 points) and Rebels (16.5 points) opened as overwhelming favorites to win their first-round games, via DraftKings.
Alabama’s inclusion as a fifth SEC team is sure to stir heated debate after the Crimson Tide flopped in the SEC championship game. Georgia held Alabama to minus-3 rushing yards and 209 yards of offense in a 28-7 victory, but the Tide remained No. 9 in the CFP rankings.
The Crimson Tide will play a first-round game at No. 8 seed Oklahoma on Dec. 19 (8 p.m. ET, ESPN/ABC). The Sooners opened as a 1.5-point favorite at DraftKings, but the line quickly moved to Alabama being favored by 1.5 points.
Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey argued that the Tide shouldn’t have been penalized for losing in the SEC championship game, while other teams under consideration were sitting at home Saturday.
“That may be the best team in the country right now,” Sankey said of Georgia. “And you’ve got to remember, Alabama went to Athens, won a game, won a number of other ranked games, played a tough schedule. This is a reward tonight. It’s not a penalty for playing in that game.”
Notre Dame lost its first two games against Miami and Texas A&M by a combined four points. The Irish then won their next 10 games by an average of 29.7 points, but that wasn’t enough to push them past Alabama or Miami for the final at-large spot.
The Tide had the eighth-best strength of record and 11th-best strength of schedule in the FBS, according to ESPN Analytics, with victories over four teams that were ranked (Georgia, Vanderbilt, Missouri and Tennessee) when Alabama played them. The Tide snapped Georgia’s 33-game home winning streak with a 24-21 victory on Sept. 27.
Alabama, however, also had the worst loss among teams under consideration by the selection committee — a stunning 31-17 defeat at Florida State in its opener. The Seminoles finished 5-7.
“Their strength of schedule was the highest in the top 11,” Yurachek said. “We felt like, in spite of their performance yesterday in the conference championship game, they deserve to stay in the ninth spot.”
With Duke upsetting Virginia in overtime in Saturday’s ACC championship game, the selection committee opted to take the two Group of Five champions — Tulane and James Madison — over the Blue Devils (8-5).
“Lost behind the computer algorithms and ‘playoff predictors’ which cloud human decision making are these two fundamental questions: Would a team that went undefeated in the Sun Belt, which has only four teams with a winning record, win seven games in the ACC? Would a team that won seven games in the ACC, which had 11 teams with a winning record (we played seven) go undefeated in the Sun Belt?” Duke coach Manny Diaz told ESPN on Sunday.
“We are aware of our setbacks that put us at the mercy of the committee, but anyone who truly watches and studies football knows the real answer to the two questions above.”
Yurachek said Sunday that the ACC champion being left out of the field had no influence on Miami being included as an at-large team.
“[That] had absolutely no impact,” Yurachek said. “Our charge as a selection committee is to rank the top 25 teams, and then you peel out the five highest conference champions and the seven at-large teams, and that’s what we did to fill out the bracket. Miami ended up being one of the seventh highest at-large teams, and that’s why they’re in the playoffs.”
The quarterfinals and semifinals will be played at the traditional New Year’s Six bowl games.
Ohio State will play the Miami-Texas A&M winner at the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Eve (7:30 p.m., ESPN). The New Year’s Day lineup will include Texas Tech vs. the JMU-Oregon winner at the Orange Bowl (noon ET, ESPN), Indiana vs. the Alabama-Oklahoma winner at the Rose Bowl (4 p.m. ET, ESPN) and Georgia vs. the Tulane-Ole Miss winner at the Sugar Bowl (8 p.m. ET, ESPN).
The Fiesta Bowl (Jan. 8, 7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) and Peach Bowl (Jan. 9, 7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) will host the semifinal games.
A national champion will be crowned on Jan. 19 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).
Bowl season kicks off Dec. 13 at noon with the Cricket Celebration Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
In all, 36 bowl games are scheduled, in addition to the 11 games of the CFP, and 42 of those games will air on the ESPN/ABC family of networks.
ESPN’s Andrea Adelson contributed to this report.
