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  • Dave Wilson, ESPN Staff WriterDec 2, 2024, 08:00 AM ET

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      Dave Wilson is a college football reporter. He previously worked at The Dallas Morning News, San Diego Union-Tribune and Las Vegas Sun.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Last time Brandon Grant set foot in Kyle Field, he was tasked with preserving a piece of sacred history.

Grant was part of the Texas equipment staff during the Longhorns’ 2011 victory over Texas A&M, the last game before the rivalry was shelved when the Aggies departed for the SEC. Late in the fourth quarter, his boss called the staff over before Justin Tucker lined up to attempt a field goal on the game’s final play with Texas trailing 25-24.

“Get down there under the goalpost,” Grant recalled him saying. “If that ball goes through and y’all don’t come back with it, you’re walking back to Austin.”

Tucker’s 40-yard kick sailed through the uprights, giving the Longhorns the win and the “eternal scoreboard,” as coach Mack Brown called it. Meanwhile, Grant and his crew barreled up the steps, elbowing their way through a sea of Aggies before spotting a maroon-clad fan who had a football-shaped bulge under his jersey. The stadium police helped Grant’s colleague, Trent Norwood, get the ball from the fan. Norwood tossed it to Grant, who immediately threw it down to another staffer on the field, who locked it away in a trunk for safekeeping on its way out of College Station.

On Saturday night, Grant was back at Kyle Field for the first time since that night. After a decade as an assistant football coach at high schools in the Austin area, Grant, now 34, was happy to watch as a civilian as the Aggies and the Longhorns resumed one of the greatest rivalries in college football, with his Longhorns pulling out a 17-7 win.

“I’m just glad the rivalry is back,” Grant said. “I was glad to be able to have a chance to be on the bookend experience of both. It’s still passionate and bitter, but it’s not angry and hateful, at least from what I saw. The fans were cordial.”

After 118 years, the will-they-or-won’t-they game, known as the Lone Star Showdown, returned as an SEC matchup. And with national implications: a spot in the SEC championship was at stake.

“This game represents the state of Texas from almost the beginning,” singer Lyle Lovett, Texas A&M Class of 1979, said at the game. “Texas A&M and the University of Texas were both created at the same time by the same legislative act. It’s been a sibling rivalry since the very beginning. The rivalry continued even without the game. The game just makes it that more special. It really is one of the great traditions in our state.”

ON FRIDAY, THE Aggies moved their traditional Midnight Yell Practice, which started before the 1931 Texas game for students to gather at Kyle Field the night before home games to rehearse yells, to 5:30 p.m. so that coach Mike Elko and the entire Texas A&M team could make an appearance. Fans filled up one side of the stadium, wrapping around into the end zones.

Matt Krehbiel, a 2023 Texas grad, was the rare Longhorns fan to be at Yell Practice, a guest of the family of his fiancée, Abby Dean, a 2021 A&M graduate. He said he’s the only Longhorn in the family.

“Her brothers, her parents, grandparents, all of them are Aggies,” he said. But he still stood his ground, throwing the Horns up on the track at Kyle Field as an entire fan base stared at him, and he was met with a traditional A&M greeting: The Aggies don’t boo, they hiss.

“I survived the onslaught of hisses,” Krehbiel said. “I think it was worse on [my fiancée] than me. Her face was beet red. I totally respect what they got going on there, but definitely prefer the ways of the burnt orange, that’s for dang sure.”

These lines blur all across the state.

“The thing about Aggies and Longhorns, believe it or not, they marry each other,” said former Texas A&M women’s basketball coach Gary Blair, who won a national championship for the Aggies alongside assistant Vic Schaefer, an Aggie who’s now the women’s head coach at Texas. “I’m not sure Auburn and Alabama do that.”

Sam Torn understands the complication of family dynamics. In 1969, he was the head Yell Leader at A&M, and went on a blind date with a Texas student. After four dates, he had fallen for her, but he got a letter from her saying she had a boyfriend at Texas and had just been seeing Torn to make him mad.

“When I got selected head Yell Leader, I said, we’re going to create a new yell,” he said. The result is the Aggies’ iconic “Beat The Hell out of t.u.” yell (the Aggies refer to Texas as lowercase texas university, rather than the University of Texas), and the hand sign to communicate it to the student body, which is akin to an “up yours” gesture, where you put your arm in your elbow and bend it upward.

At the first Yell Practice since its hiatus, Torn was on the very front lines, watching his yell echo through Kyle Field over and over.

“It was the biggest rivalry, the biggest two schools, the biggest state, and it meant a lot to a lot of people,” Torn said on the field. “It’s very emotional for me for it to return. I don’t like them, they don’t like me, but there’s a part of me that’s just very joyful.”

The Texas student who dumped him has been Torn’s wife for 54 years now. He and Susan have three children who are Aggies, and his two sons, Scott and Chris, were both Yell Leaders.

Some people were even conflicted, just among themselves. Eryn Lyle wore a sweatshirt she sewed together that was half maroon and half burnt orange.

“I was a Texas A&M undergraduate, then I betrayed my family, betrayed A&M and went off to UT to go to law school. So I am a person divided,” she said. “I am so excited. I didn’t get to see it while I was in school because the Aggies hadn’t played against Texas in several years. I don’t know who to cheer for. I think I’ll be rooting for the offense.”

The anticipation for the game made it the most expensive ticket in regular-season college football or NFL history, according to Forbes. Vivid Seats said resale tickets averaged $1,025. Despite the massive investment, Texas fans Ryan and Ingrid Crow couldn’t resist. They kept waiting and waiting, hoping prices would go down, but finally pulled the trigger this week, at the low, low cost of $4,200 for two tickets on the third row at the 45-yard line. And still found it worth it.

“We won!” Ingrid said.

“After 13 years, how can you not go to a game like this?” her husband added. “We could not miss this game.”

Being at the game is a family tradition for Tim Wiley of Austin, who hasn’t missed an A&M-Texas game since 1957, when the game was played, per tradition, on Thanksgiving. His dad, who died while the rivalry was on hiatus, had been at every once since 1944.

“I didn’t know what Thanksgiving was,” Wiley said. “It wasn’t eating turkey, it was usually eating a pimento cheese sandwich, tailgating when my mother made them.”

Grant and his father, Mike, in their orange, were guests of the maroon-clad Wileys at their family tailgate. Underneath the tent, they talked about their mutual appreciation for being back together.

“[This] is an iconic rivalry because most families have both schools in their family,” Wiley said. “I’m just glad that most families have an Aggie in there so there’s some formal education in their family.”

A lot has changed in College Station since the last time the Longhorns visited. Kyle Field underwent a $484 million renovation that brought capacity to more than 102,000 and opened in 2015. Aggie Park, a $36 million, 22-acre privately funded project across the street from Kyle Field, is the new tailgating epicenter, and also the site of “College GameDay” which made a visit during the big rivalry weekend.

The park was bursting at the seams on Saturday. Aggies linebacker Taurean York said there were “probably 300,000 people here in the vicinity of Kyle Field,” adding that it was “the biggest game of a lot of people’s lives.”

THERE WERE SIDESHOWS everywhere. On Saturday evening, before kickoff, the Texas A&M Police account tweeted that “a man & his dog were riding a longhorn” around campus.

That’d be Moe Taylor, of Elgin, Texas, who brings his longhorn, Ben, to Texas sporting events along with his dog, Damit.

“We were on campus for probably an hour before they found us,” Taylor said, incredulous that of all places, you can’t ride a steer in College Station. “But we can’t argue. We don’t wanna get in no trouble. We went down to the Dixie Chicken.”

At the Dixie Chicken, the legendary bar in Texas A&M’s Northgate district, Ben took photos with fans.

“We had a blast. The fans were all hyped up,” Taylor said. “Ben really enjoyed it. He doesn’t get mad or anything, he just lets people get on and off. He takes it well.”

Back in Aggie Park, former Texas A&M coach R.C. Slocum, who attended his first A&M-Texas game in 1959 and coached in 30 rivalry games between the Aggies and Longhorns — he likes to note that he came out the winner in 16 of them — made his way through the packed park. He welcomed every Longhorns fan he saw back to College Station while absorbing attaboys at every turn from Aggies who were thrilled to see the winningest coach in A&M history mingling with the common folk.

“I’m glad that Texas is in the SEC,” Slocum said. “All Aggies don’t feel like that. Maybe all Texas fans don’t feel like that, but to me, this big state to have two SEC teams … makes sense to me. And it adds, really, to both of our values.”

Still, he did his part to rally the faithful before they played the Longhorns. The “Aggie War Hymn” implores listeners to “saw Varsity’s horns off,” and Slocum did just that.

Slocum’s friend, John Jones, decided to cook some “Texas-raised beef” in Aggie Park to serve to tailgaters. Instead of steaks or hamburgers, he opted for a bigger statement.

“I thought it’d be just a great thing to do since we’ve had such an extended stay between our rivalries to actually cook something that is great food and sort of resembles a mascot of another team,” Jones said.

So he roasted an entire Longhorn, horns and all. And along came Slocum to fulfill his destiny, sawing the horns off the thing with a miniature chainsaw as a crowd of Aggies cheered.

As Slocum waited for his turn, he waved over some Aggies fans he noticed in the crowd. So along came Drew Brees with his sons, Baylen, Bowen and Callen, all wearing maroon.

Brees, an Austin native, is the nephew of Marty Akins, an All-American quarterback for the Longhorns in the 1980s. But his parents are both Aggies — his father, Eugene “Chip” Brees, played basketball at A&M — and he was captured on video on Saturday night telling Johnny Manziel on the sideline that he “always wanted to be an Aggie.” But he wasn’t recruited by the Aggies or Longhorns, so he went to Purdue and threw for more than 10,000 yards over his four years with the Boilermakers.

Slocum posed for photos with the Brees boys and turned to an assembled crowd and announced that when anyone asks his biggest recruiting regrets, Brees is always the big one that got away.

“This is one of the greatest rivalries in all college football,” Brees said. “You don’t understand how upset I was when this thing went away. It was the dumbest thing ever for the state of Texas. This rivalry always needs to exist. I don’t care what conference these teams are in or I don’t care where the egos are. They always need to play this game for the fans.”

They played the game, and Horns stayed intact. The Texas defense held the Aggies’ offense scoreless, and the Longhorns ran the ball for 240 yards to control the game from start to finish for a 17-7 win, a bitter disappointment to the partisan crowd of 109,028, the third largest ever to watch a game at Kyle Field.

Kevin Eltife, the chairman of the UT System, expressed his relief on the field afterward that the first game of the revival is over and the Longhorns came away with another win.

“This is as sweet as it gets. They said we couldn’t compete in the SEC, and look baby, we’re heading to the SEC championship,” Eltife said. “Hats off to the Aggies. We have nothing but respect for Texas A&M. They’re a phenomenal school and football program, and for us to leave here with a victory is huge. I’ve been a nervous wreck the whole week. I couldn’t eat Thanksgiving, so now I’m going to go home and have a real damn Thanksgiving.”

The scoreboard may not be eternal this time, but the Aggies will have to wait until next year’s game in Austin, where they won in 2010, to get their next shot.

Slocum, 80, is a cancer survivor and was thankful to be back at Kyle Field for the game amid the pageantry and is looking forward to a holiday tradition returning.

“I walked in with their band,” he said. “For most of my life, this weekend has been a special weekend.”

Grant didn’t have to harangue any Aggies to retrieve any keepsakes this time, and came away thrilled with the experience.

“The atmosphere there was a lot better than I remember,” he said. “I think the new stadium has a pretty big impact on the level they can get that place. I couldn’t imagine sitting where we sat and having the same experience with OU or Texas Tech. It was still that brotherly rivalry where you hate but you love ’em at the same time, or you love the people that are there.”

And after years he lost in the rivalry’s absence, he’s excited to make new memories like the ones he made with his father, who went to Texas to play baseball in the 1970s. Grant’s son Gray is 3, and he said he wakes up from naps singing the Texas fight song.

“I look forward to my son growing up the same way I grew up, down the street from one of his best friends that is an Aggie and going back and forth,” he said. “Yeah, I’m glad it’s back for sure.”

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National signing day live: Commits, flips, rumors and best moments

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December 4, 2024

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National signing day live: Commits, flips, rumors and best moments

College football’s national signing day has kicked off with the early signing period. Class of 2025 high school recruits are now able to sign their national letters of intent to lock them into the colleges of their choice.

With 16 ESPN 300 commitments, Georgia starts the signing period with the No. 1 class in ESPN’s rankings. However, the top spot has not been locked down completely and has changed hands a few times this cycle. Most programs will sign the majority of their class this week, but recruiting is far from over. If a prospect doesn’t sign a national letter of intent by Friday, the next national signing day for this cycle begins Feb. 5, 2025.

We’re tracking the latest news, analysis, class rankings movement and more throughout Wednesday, with latest updates at the top:

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Class rankings: Top 50 schools
Last-minute intel, flips to watch

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CFP Anger Index: Why Ole Miss and Miami should both be furious over Bama’s ranking

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December 4, 2024

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CFP Anger Index: Why Ole Miss and Miami should both be furious over Bama's ranking

  • David Hale, ESPN Staff WriterDec 3, 2024, 07:51 PM ET

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    • College football reporter.
    • Joined ESPN in 2012.
    • Graduate of the University of Delaware.

At least in theory, 92% of the committee’s job should already be done.

It appears to be a given that Oregon, Penn State, Ohio State, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Notre Dame and (probably) SMU and Indiana are in.

The winners of the Big 12 and Mountain West championship games are also in.

So, unless Clemson wins the ACC and closes out the field, that leaves one spot remaining with a host of teams offering compelling cases for inclusion.

But let’s start with something that should be obvious: The 12th team to make the field will be flawed. This isn’t a new phenomenon based on weak schedules or shocking losses. The No. 12 team in the ranking every year has its share of warts. That’s why it’s No. 12. We’re just used to arguing over a top four, not No. 12, so wrapping our heads around a playoff team with a loss to — oh, let’s say Vanderbilt — seems entirely wrong. When it comes to picking 12 teams, there will always be reasons to argue someone doesn’t belong or has done something so inexcusably awful they should be excluded without further debate.

But, of course, if that were true, Notre Dame would already be packing its bags for the Music City Bowl.

Instead, we should be viewing the process of picking the No. 12 team through an optimist’s lens. What have these teams done to earn their way in? Why should we believe they’re capable of — well, maybe not winning it all, but at least putting on a good show in the opening round? What’s the sales pitch for inclusion?

And when we view the decision through that lens, there are at least three reasonable, logical paths to follow.

But this is about a meeting of the College Football Playoff selection committee, where hotel security at the Gaylord Texan Hotel has explicit orders to keep reason and logic from stepping foot on the premises, and so, of course, the one team that isn’t left standing at the end of those logical pathways is exactly the team it has tabbed as the leader in the clubhouse: Alabama.

And that, friends, means a lot of programs have ample reason to be angry.

So, let’s walk down those logical pathways as a means of underscoring just how ridiculous the committee’s take on these rankings looks, bringing us to this week’s Anger Index.

There’s an Occam’s razor aspect to this conundrum that the committee should’ve considered: The simplest, most elegant solution is usually the right one.

This was the committee’s solution back in the first year of the playoff. In 2014, the committee was left to decide between 11-1 TCU and 11-1 Baylor. In the regular season, Baylor had beaten TCU head to head by 3 points, but the Bears also had a rather ugly 41-27 loss to West Virginia. The Big 12, at that time, didn’t have a conference championship game, leaving it to the committee to parse out who was more deserving of the No. 4 spot in the playoff.

The committee’s answer? Ohio State!

Baylor won its regular-season finale over No. 9 Kansas State by 11. TCU won its finale against Iowa State by 55-3. And yet the committee moved up 11-1 Ohio State to No. 4, bypassing both Big 12 schools. It was beautiful in its simplicity. Why make an impossible choice between Door No. 1 and Door No. 2 when Door No. 3 is already wide open?

This isn’t necessarily Miami’s best case for the final playoff slot, of course, but the fact that the Hurricanes are 10-2 and those SEC schools vying for the space are all 9-3 is the perfect opportunity for the committee to simply say, “This team has more wins,” the same way it said “Ohio State has a conference championship” as a completely reasonable justification for avoiding a tough call.

And it’s not as if Miami would be a bad choice. The Canes demolished Florida, a team that beat Ole Miss. The Canes demolished USF, a team that took Alabama into the fourth quarter in Tuscaloosa. The Canes have two road losses by a combined nine points against two pretty good teams — No. 22 Syracuse and a 7-5 Georgia Tech team that just took Georgia to eight overtimes (and probably should’ve won if the officials had been watching the game). QB Cam Ward is extraordinary, the offense is fun, the Canes can play with pretty much anyone, and none of their losses are bad. Isn’t that effectively South Carolina’s pitch?

So, yeah, giving the 12th playoff spot to Miami would’ve been an easy win for the committee. Instead, it chose pain.

Indeed, it docked Miami more spots for a road loss to the No. 22 team in the country than it did for Ohio State losing to 7-5 Michigan.

If the committee didn’t want to prioritize the simplest solution by going with the team with the best record, then certainly you’d think the argument came down to this: Not all wins are equal, and therefore we should choose the team that had proven the most on the field.

Well, folks, the answer to that question is absolutely Ole Miss.

Ole Miss and Alabama both beat South Carolina head to head, but the Rebels dominated their game, while the Tide snuck by with a two-point win.

Ole Miss and Alabama have the same best win, against No. 5 Georgia. But Alabama came within minutes of one of the most epic collapses in college football history, narrowly escaping with a seven-point win. Ole Miss, on the other hand, beat Georgia by 18 in a game that was never particularly close. In fact, do you know the last team to beat Georgia by more points than Ole Miss did this year? That would be the 2019 LSU Tigers, arguably the best college football team ever assembled.

Ole Miss is ranked higher in SP+, too. The Rebels are an analytics dream team, with one of the top offenses and defenses in the country statistically. SP+ has the Rebels at No. 3 — ahead of Texas! — while Alabama checks in at No. 5, Miami at No. 10 and South Carolina at No. 13.

OK, but what about strength of schedule? Doesn’t that favor Alabama? It does, but that metric isn’t exactly what it seems. According to ESPN, the Tide played the 17th-toughest schedule in the country, while Ole Miss played the 31st. That seems like a big difference, right? But when we look at the hard numbers rather than the ranking, the difference is only about 1% (Bama at 98.97 and Ole Miss at 97.66). That’s basically the difference between Alabama playing Western Kentucky and Ole Miss playing MTSU. Oh, and if strength of schedule really matters that much, South Carolina ranks ahead of both of them.

And let’s talk about that schedule, because it wasn’t the “strength” that proved to be Alabama’s undoing. The Tide lost to a pair of 6-6 teams. It was the mediocrity on their slate that killed them.

OK, yes, Ole Miss lost to a couple pretty average teams, too — 7-5 Florida and 4-8 Kentucky. But again, if the records were all that mattered to the committee, Miami would be in the playoff. So let’s compare SP+ rankings for those losses.

Alabama lost to SP+ Nos. 8, 31 and 58 for an average of 32.3.

Ole Miss lost to SP+ Nos. 17, 22 and 48 for an average of 29.0.

So, on average, the Rebels’ losses weren’t as bad as Alabama’s. Their wins were markedly better than Alabama’s. Their underlying stats are better than Alabama’s. Their schedule strength was effectively equal to Alabama’s.

So explain to us again why Ole Miss isn’t in the No. 11 slot, because we’re at a complete loss to understand it.

To be sure, there is not a logical argument in South Carolina’s favor. The Gamecocks have the same record as Alabama and Ole Miss and lost to both of them head to head. That, on its face, should eliminate South Carolina.

But, perhaps there’s a more emotional take here; an “eye test,” if you will.

Watch South Carolina over the past six games — all wins, including against Texas A&M, Missouri and Clemson (not to mention a dominant performance against an Oklahoma team that whipped Alabama) — and it’s pretty easy to suggest the Gamecocks are playing as well as any team in the country.

Now, back in the four-team playoff era, this wouldn’t have mattered at all. Go back and look at 2015 Stanford with Christian McCaffrey, which lost its opener to Northwestern before going on a roll and winning 11 of its next 12, or 2016 USC that started 1-3 and reeled off eight straight wins with a new QB. Those teams could’ve genuinely won it all if they had been given a ticket to the dance, but in those days, there was no room for the hottest team. Just the most deserving.

But no one truly deserving is left out if we include South Carolina now. Miami and Alabama and Ole Miss (and others) all have their arguments in favor of inclusion, but as we noted at the top, all have enough warts to miss out, too.

So why not take the team playing the best? How many times in the NFL playoffs have we seen a team that finished strong go on a run and win the Super Bowl? Are they any less a champion, because they lost a couple games in September?

South Carolina’s inclusion would be a boon for all the teams that grow as the season progresses, get better through coaching, hard work and perseverance, that overcome adversity and rise to meet the moment. In short, South Carolina is a feel-good story in a sport that should embrace that type of team.

Instead, the committee is embracing Darth Vader because the Empire holds a lot of sway over the galaxy.

Here’s a fun blind comparison.

Team A: 10-2, No. 12 strength of record, losses to SP+ Nos. 39 and 51 with best win against SP+ No. 12

Team B: 10-2, No. 14 strength of record, losses to SP+ Nos. 50 and 59 with best win against SP+ No. 18

Neither of these teams will play in their conference championship games.

If you had to pick one for the playoff, which would you take?

Well, the records are the same, but Team A seems to have the edge everywhere else, right?

OK, Team A is BYU.

Team B? That’s Miami.

We’re not arguing against Miami, but Miami checks in as the first team out. BYU checks in behind three-loss Clemson!

Perhaps the Cougars’ losses (to Arizona State and Kansas) are reason enough for exclusion (though by that logic, we should be waving goodbye to Alabama and Ole Miss, too), but the fact that BYU isn’t even in the conversation is ridiculous.

play

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Booger: Committee on ‘slippery slope’ choosing Alabama over Miami

Booger McFarland and Joey Galloway discuss whether the CFP selection committee is making the right decision favoring Alabama over Miami.

We’ve laid out perfectly reasonable arguments for Miami, Ole Miss, South Carolina and BYU.

What’s the argument for Alabama?

Strength of schedule? South Carolina’s is better.

A big win vs. Georgia? Ole Miss beat the Dawgs by more.

Strength of record? That’s just a function of strength of schedule, and frankly any record that includes losses to Oklahoma and Vanderbilt — including one blowout — isn’t very “strong.”

Better stats? Ole Miss is rated higher in SP+, Miami’s offense is far more compelling, and South Carolina’s defense is, too.

So what exactly is the case for Alabama?

Committee chair Warde Manuel’s best attempt at an explanation: Alabama is 3-1 vs. the current top 25. That, of course, ignores that Miami has wins vs. the Nos. 1 and 3 teams in the AP’s others receiving votes list, and ranking 25 teams is an entirely arbitrary cutoff. And more importantly, it ignores that Alabama is also 6-2 vs. teams not in the current top 25.

No, the real case for Alabama is the same one the committee made last year, that it believes — in spite of any hard evidence — that Alabama is just better. It believes Alabama would win a future hypothetical matchup. It is prioritizing a gut feeling.

We can criticize the committee for a lot of things, but most of it is hair-splitting, and the folks on the committee have a particularly tough job. We’re sympathetic. But when this group continually — year after year (yes, we’re talking to you, Florida State) — ignores what happens in the actual games on the actual field of play in favor of its own projections, that threatens to undermine the entire sport, and that’s a shame.

Is Alabama a good football team? Sure. If the Tide get in, could they win a game or two or the whole darn thing? Absolutely. But if that’s the criteria, then there was no need for Alabama’s players to suit up 12 times this year and go to battle, and that’s an insult to them — even if it means handing them a gift in the process.

We’ve argued a bunch over the No. 12 team, but there’s another debate rolling in the college football world, and that involves conference championships.

The debate has largely centered on SMU and whether the Mustangs, if they lose the ACC title to Clemson, should be reevaluated if they’re 11-2 (particularly if Clemson is stealing a playoff bid).

It’s a reasonable discussion. On one hand, there is precedent. Just two years ago, USC entered conference championship week ranked No. 4, only to lose in a blowout to Utah. The committee dropped the Trojans to No. 10 and rewarded Ohio State — a team that was sitting at home and watching championship weekend — with a playoff berth. At the time, virtually no one even mentioned this. It made logical sense.

But in the 12-team era, when there should ostensibly be a larger margin for error, it seems entirely wrong to suggest a team that won the right to play an extra game should then have that extra data point held against it to the point that it falls out of the playoff field. (And, oh, how ironic would it be if Lane Kiffin complained about this very possibility, suggesting it was better to miss the SEC title game, only to have Kiffin’s team get in as a result of missing the SEC championship and SMU losing the ACC championship.)

But the big point being missed here is that the discussion shouldn’t stop with SMU. What about Boise State?

The Broncos are currently one of the four teams set to get first-round byes because of an 11-1 record, a head-to-head win over UNLV and a largely dominant season. But if they lose a rematch to UNLV — a team it has already beaten once — then the Broncos would be out of the playoff entirely.

Is that fair?

Well, here’s another comparison.

Team A: 11-1, No. 13 strength of record, loss to a top-10 team by 3, four wins vs. bowl-eligible opponents and one win vs. a currently ranked foe.

Team B: 11-1, No. 8 strength of record, loss to a top-10 team by 23, three wins vs. bowl-eligible opponents and no wins vs. currently ranked foes.

It should be noted here that the schedule strength difference between the two is about an 8% margin — notable, but not significant.

Who would you say was more deserving of a playoff bid?

Team A, as you might’ve guessed, is Boise State.

Team B is ranked one spot ahead of the Broncos. It’s Indiana, a team that won’t play another game and is considered safely in.

So, why exactly is Boise State not also safely in right now?

It’s a question the committee should be asking.

Also angry this week: Duke Blue Devils (9-3, unranked), Missouri Tigers (9-3, No. 19), Illinois Fighting Illini (9-3, No. 21), Georgia Bulldogs (who were docked far worse for losses against Ole Miss and Alabama than Ohio State was for losing to 7-5 Michigan), Tennessee Volunteers (10-2, No. 7 and should have the first-round home game being handed to Ohio State) and Ryan Day, because life is really unfair sometimes.

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Crimson Tide land at No. 11 in the CFP rankings

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December 4, 2024

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Crimson Tide land at No. 11 in the CFP rankings

  • Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior WriterDec 3, 2024, 07:16 PM ET

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    • Senior college football writer
    • Author of seven books on college football
    • Graduate of the University of Georgia

Barring an upset in Saturday’s ACC championship game between Clemson and SMU, Alabama might be headed back to the College Football Playoff for the ninth time in the past 11 seasons.

The Crimson Tide were ranked No. 11 in the CFP selection committee’s penultimate rankings on Tuesday, one spot ahead of Miami. The Tide lost three times under first-year coach Kalen DeBoer, including an unsightly 24-3 defeat at Oklahoma on Nov. 23.

The Hurricanes suffered their second defeat of the season on Saturday, 42-38 at Syracuse. Miami would be the first team left out of the 12-team playoff based on the current rankings because the fifth-highest-rated conference champion would jump it.

Since neither Alabama nor Miami qualified for their respective conference championship games, it would seem the Hurricanes would have a difficult time jumping the Tide in the final rankings, which will be released by the selection committee on Sunday.

CFP selection committee chairman Warde Manuel said on ESPN’s rankings release show Tuesday night that teams not competing in championship games this weekend, including Alabama and Miami, wouldn’t have their rankings changed because they’re not playing another game.

“Any team that is not playing right now, we don’t have a data point to rearrange where we have those teams ranked, and so that is set in terms of how we see them going into the final week of championship week,” Manuel said. “There’s nothing that’s going to change for us to evaluate them any differently than we have now.

“Those teams who are not playing cannot be adjusted in terms of where they are compared to other teams that are not playing, but the championship [game] teams we will evaluate that data point to determine if there needs to be any movement, based on how the performance of the game goes.”

Manuel noted that Alabama is 3-1 against teams ranked by the committee, while Miami is 0-1. The Tide are 6-1 against opponents with winning records, while the Hurricanes are 4-2.

“Both have had some losses that weren’t what they wanted out of those games, but in the last three games, Miami has lost twice, and so for us, in evaluating that body of work, we felt that Alabama got the edge over Miami,” Manuel said.

Undefeated Oregon remained No. 1 in the selection committee’s rankings, followed by Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame and Georgia.

Ohio State, which was on the wrong end of a stunning 13-10 loss to Michigan at home on Saturday, fell four spots to No. 6. Tennessee, SMU, Indiana and Boise State rounded out the top 10.

After Alabama and Miami, Ole Miss was No. 13 and South Carolina was No. 14.

Based on the current rankings, the top four conference champions that would receive first-round byes in the 12-team bracket are Oregon, Texas, SMU and Boise State.

If Boise State loses to UNLV in Friday’s Mountain West Conference championship game, the winner of Saturday’s Big 12 championship game between No. 15 Arizona State and No. 16 Iowa State would probably be the fourth-highest-rated conference champion.

The first-round matchups, based on the current rankings, would look like this: No. 12 Arizona State at No. 5 Penn State; No. 11 Alabama at No. 6 Notre Dame; No. 10 Indiana at No. 7 Georgia; and No. 9 Tennessee at No. 8 Ohio State.

“It could change. It all depends on the outcome of these [conference championship] games,” Manuel said. “As we have said, we have high regard for those who are playing in those conference championships.”

Alabama might not be completely out of the woods, however, should Clemson beat SMU in Saturday’s ACC championship game. If the Tigers were to secure the ACC’s automatic bid, the selection committee would have to decide whether to include the 11-2 Mustangs or the 9-3 Crimson Tide.

Miami coach Mario Cristobal had argued this week that the Hurricanes (10-2) were deserving because they’d lost fewer games than other teams under consideration for one of the final at-large bids.

“We won 10 games this year and not many teams have,” Cristobal said Tuesday in his weekly appearance on WQAM, the Hurricanes’ flagship radio station. “And in our losses, those losses came down to one possession. That’s a very different résumé than the 9-3 teams’. The awards should go to the teams that are actually winning the games, not the ones that are politicking themselves out of losses.”

The Hurricanes, as Manuel alluded to, lost two of their last three games — they also fell 28-23 at Georgia Tech on Nov. 9 — and they didn’t beat a team currently ranked by the CFP.

Along with losing at Oklahoma, the Crimson Tide fell 40-35 at Vanderbilt and 24-17 at Tennessee. Alabama did defeat three teams ranked by the CFP this week: Georgia, South Carolina and Missouri.

“We’re one of the 12 best teams, the way we see it,” DeBoer said on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Tuesday.

The committee ranked the Tide higher than two other SEC teams with three losses: Ole Miss and South Carolina. (The Gamecocks have won six games in a row.)

Iowa State was No. 16 in the CFP rankings, followed by Clemson, BYU, Missouri and UNLV. Illinois, Syracuse, Colorado, Army and Memphis closed the top 25.

Army returned to the rankings, while Syracuse and Memphis are ranked for the first time this season. Tulane, Texas A&M and Kansas State fell out of the top 25 after losing last week.

The four first-round games will be played at the home campus of each higher-seeded team on Dec. 20 and 21.

The four quarterfinal games will be staged at the VRBO Fiesta Bowl, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl presented by Prudential and Allstate Sugar Bowl on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.

The two semifinal games will take place at the Capital One Orange Bowl and Goodyear Cotton Bowl on Jan. 9 and 10.

The CFP National Championship presented by AT&T is scheduled for Jan. 20 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

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