Alabama, Notre Dame, Miami on edge ahead of College Football Playoff bracket announcement

The games have all been played. Now, it’s time for a few more rounds of number crunching before the College Football Playoff bracket is revealed.

Among the few certainties when the pairings come out Sunday: Indiana (13-0) will enter the playoff at No. 1 and two of the folloiwng five teams will be crying up a storm: Alabama, Notre Dame, Miami, Duke and James Madison.

The first three will likely only get two spots in the 12-team bracket, as the selection committee will decide how much weight to place on Alabama’s lopsided loss to Georgia on Saturday while the other two teams were idle idle.

And then the committee will have to decide whether Duke, unranked and with five losses, gets in over James Madison, which won the Sun Belt Conference and is 12-1. The Dukes are hoping to join American champion Tulane as a Group of Five gate-crasher: The CFP has never had two G5 teams in the mix before.

The four top-seeded teams will get first-round byes — starting with Indiana and probably including Ohio State, Georgia and Texas Tech — then the next eight will play games at the home stadiums of the higher-seeded teams beginning on Dec. 19. The next two rounds will take place Dec. 31-Jan. 1, then Jan. 8-9 at traditional bowl-game sites. The final is set for Jan. 19 outside of Miami.

The biggest debate and most of the second-guessing will center on the Alabama-Notre Dame-Miami decision.

Some believe the committee placed the Crimson Tide at No. 9, one spot ahead of the Fighting Irish, last week to create room for the Tide to lose, slide in the rankings but still make the field. Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer says his team shouldn’t be punished for advancing to a conference championship and losing.

“How that can can hurt you and keep you out of the playoff?” he asked.

Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman wants the committee comparing his team to Alabama because, that way, the Irish could presumably end up at 9 or 10 and squeak into the bracket.

What he doesn’t want is for the committee to compare his team to No. 12 Miami. On Aug. 31, the Hurricanes beat the Irish, and if those two squads are ranked right next to each other, that head-to-head matchup could be the difference even if it seems like a long time ago.

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