Almighty Alabama felt disrespected by the College Football Playoff selection committee in 2024. It certainly cannot claim that in ’25.
The committee took care of the Crimson Tide in the final Top 25 rankings before Selection Sunday, making a small but potentially significant adjustment. Alabama moved up one spot to No. 9 while Notre Dame dropped one spot to No. 10—likely the last at-large position in the 12-team playoff—for reasons that were very poorly explained by chairman Hunter Yurachek later Tuesday night.
The two major ramifications of this move:
- If No. 11 BYU wins the Big 12 championship, it would assuredly bump the last at-large team out of the field. That’s now Notre Dame, not Bama.
- If Alabama loses the Southeastern Conference title game to Georgia, there is a one-spot firewall between the Crimson Tide and being knocked out of the field. The Tide could, in theory, be dropped to No. 10 but remain in the bracket. (If Bama loses and BYU wins, there may be no protecting Kalen DeBoer’s team. Especially if it’s an emphatic loss.)
The basis for making the decision to bump up 10–2 Alabama and knock down 10–2 Notre Dame? The Tide’s seven-point victory over Auburn on Saturday.
It’s a rivalry game, sure. And an especially difficult rivalry game for Bama when it’s in Jordan-Hare Stadium. But that doesn’t mean the Tide should get bonus points for beating a bad team.
Auburn is 5–7 and fired its coach weeks ago. Scraping past the Tigers with a tiebreaking touchdown in the final four minutes shouldn’t have impressed anyone, but apparently the committee was smitten.
“That debate between Notre Dame and Alabama has been one of the fiercest debates for the last three weeks, and it really has split our committee room,” Yurachek said. “We’ve got people that thought highly of Alabama—we all think highly of both of those teams, but some are very much in Alabama’s camp, some are very much in Notre Dame’s camp.”
Then Yurachek launched himself down a slip-and-slide logic ride.
“It’s just Alabama in a rivalry game on the road,” he said. “Auburn has been an extremely tough place to play for many teams this year, such as Georgia and Vanderbilt, and the committee gave Alabama a little respect for winning that game, getting out early 17–0.”
Let’s pause to apply a fact check.
Who knew a first-half lead could have so much impact? Maybe the committee had seen enough at that point and went to bed. It was a night game, after all.
As for Auburn’s home mojo: The Tigers went 3–4 at Jordan-Hare this season, 0–4 in SEC play. They lost 10–3 at home to 5–7 Kentucky, which was otherwise winless on the road and lost its other three road games by an average of 23.7 points.
Oh, and that Vanderbilt game that Yurachek mentioned as an example of the difficulty playing on The Plains? It was in Nashville.
Anyway. Please proceed, Hunter.
“The game got tied again, and Alabama, a gutsy call there late in the game to go for it on fourth-and-2, and then getting a turnover again late in the game,” Yurachek said. “The committee just felt like that was enough of a win, of a metric, to push Alabama ahead of Notre Dame.”
The gutsy call: We’re giving bonus points for guts now? It was, in some ways, a reckless call—going for it while in chip-shot field goal range to take the lead. But it worked out, so Alabama moves up!
The turnover: Congrats to the Alabama defense, but also Auburn had advanced the ball all the way to the Tide 20-yard line when it fumbled. There was a clear and present danger that the game was going to be tied in the final minute—or the Tigers might have gone for two points and the win—which you might think would take some shine off that first-half lead that apparently mattered.
Add it all up, and Alabama is nearly assured of a playoff spot. Maybe that’s the way it should be, in terms of Bama’s standing vs. Notre Dame. Maybe the votes tilted to the Tide out of a simple belief that they’re the better team in that comparison.
But this late plot twist based on a shaky win over a team with a losing record is understandable fuel for righteous indignation beneath the Golden Dome.
College Football Playoff rankings after Week 14
| Rank | Team | Change From Last Week |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ohio State | None |
| 2 | Indiana | None |
| 3 | Georgia | +1 |
| 4 | Texas Tech | +1 |
| 5 | Oregon | +1 |
| 6 | Mississippi | +1 |
| 7 | Texas A&M | -4 |
| 8 | Oklahoma | None |
| 9 | Alabama | +1 |
| 10 | Notre Dame | -1 |
| 11 | BYU | None |
| 12 | Miami | None |
| 13 | Texas | +3 |
| 14 | Vanderbilt | None |
| 15 | Utah | -2 |
| 16 | USC | +1 |
| 17 | Virginia | +1 |
| 18 | Arizona | +7 |
| 19 | Michigan | -4 |
| 20 | Tulane | +4 |
| 21 | Houston | NR |
| 22 | Georgia Tech | +1 |
| 23 | Iowa | NR |
| 24 | North Texas | None |
| 25 | James Madison | NR |
Except for this inconvenient situation: The Fighting Irish probably shouldn’t be two spots ahead of 10–2 Miami, which beat Notre Dame to start the season. That head-to-head result remains stubbornly unaccounted for by the committee, a fact that has infuriated the Hurricanes and even the governor of Florida. (We’re waiting to see if another prominent Floridian, a certain resident of Mar-a-Lago, wants to weigh in.)
“If we were just comparing Miami and Notre Dame side by side, it’s a little bit easier to use that comparison,” Yurachek said. “But we’re not comparing Notre Dame and Miami side by side. We’ve been comparing Alabama, Notre Dame, BYU and Miami collectively and evaluating those teams and how they look.
“When you put all of those teams together, the committee has felt for the past several weeks that Notre Dame … and then BYU … deserved to be ranked higher than Miami.”
So if you’re scoring at home: Alabama is shafting Notre Dame which is shafting Miami. Maybe the scar tissue from semi-controversially leaving out the most successful program of the playoff era last year is real.
The most difficult decision the committee might have had to make was what to do with Mississippi in the wake of the most controversial coaching change in college football history. (You may have heard about it.) With Lane Kiffin and several assistants gone, would the 11–1 Rebels be dropped in the rankings?
The answer is no. Ole Miss came in at No. 6, which should secure a first-round home game at worst (perhaps still a bye, if both No. 4 Georgia and No. 5 Texas Tech lose Saturday). The Rebels will still be in the bracket and will not be sent on the road.
“It’s impossible for us at this time as a committee to evaluate what the impact is on losing your head coach, specifically at Ole Miss, because we don’t have a game that we can compare Ole Miss with Lane Kiffin versus without him,” Yurachek said. “Without that data point, really did not become part of our thought process in how we evaluated Ole Miss this week.”
That’s solid logic. Unfortunately for Yurachek and the committee, more often it’s hard to articulate coherent reasons for much of what they do. The weekly meetings and the credibility-damaging interviews that follow have become just another nonsensical layer of college football’s bizarre way of doing business.
It’s an especially thankless task for Yurachek, who was called out of the bullpen to be the emergency chairman after the abrupt dismissal at Baylor of athletic director Mack Rhoades. It’s a thankless job that the Arkansas AD was thrust into.
But if forced to defend the committee’s work, some command of the facts would be appreciated.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Alabama’s Nonsensical College Football Playoff Rankings Rise Has Major Ramifications.
