Ohio State, Indiana, Georgia and Texas Tech owned the top four spots in the penultimate College Football Playoff rankings released Tuesday night ahead of conference championship weekend.
Georgia and Texas Tech moved up a spot thanks to then-No. 3 Texas A&M’s loss to Texas last Saturday. Oregon and Ole Miss also rose a spot to Nos. 5 and 6, respectively, as the Aggies dropped to seventh.
The other movement of note involved Alabama and Notre Dame, which flipped places despite each team winning their regular-season finales — Alabama 27-20 at Auburn and Notre Dame 49-20 at Stanford — to post 10-2 records.
The Crimson Tide qualified for the SEC championship game and jumped from No. 10 to No. 9 past Notre Dame, which does not have a championship game to play in.
In his interview on the ESPN broadcast, CFP committee chair and Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek said the Alabama-Notre Dame debate has been strong among committee members for a number of weeks.
“This week as we looked at those two teams and how closely they have been over the past three weeks,” Yurachek said, “Notre Dame went on the road, had a strong win at Stanford, but Alabama went on the road in a rivalry game, looked really good especially in the first half … and I think that was enough to change the minds of a couple of committee members to push Alabama up ahead of Notre Dame in this week’s rankings.”
As it stands, the Crimson Tide and Fighting Irish are the last two at-large teams in the projected field. BYU, Miami and Texas are the first three teams outside the field. That’s because this week’s conference championship games will decide two automatic qualifiers.
The ACC (No. 17 Virginia vs. unranked Duke), the American (No. 20 Tulane vs. No. 24 North Texas) and the Sun Belt (No. 25 James Madison vs. Troy) don’t have teams ranked in the top 12. But the five highest-ranked conference champs — regardless of Power 5 status — are guaranteed berths, so the winners of two of those games will qualify for the playoff.
Unlike last season, which saw Big 12 champion Arizona State and Mountain West champ Boise State receive first-round byes, teams are only seeded by ranking and the four best conference champs are no longer guaranteed a bye.
Yurachek also assured that “Teams that are idle can move up or down,” meaning teams that are not playing in a conference title game are not necessarily locked in to their spot or their order in the rankings.
The final rankings and 12-team field will be revealed Sunday at noon ET.
CFP mock bracket
First-round games:
–Fifth-highest conference champion at No. 5 Oregon
–Fourth-highest conference champion at No. 6 Ole Miss
–No. 10 Notre Dame at No. 7 Texas A&M
–No. 9 Alabama at No. 8 Oklahoma
First-round byes: No. 1 Ohio State, No. 2 Indiana, No. 3 Georgia, No. 4 Texas Tech
1. Ohio State
2. Indiana
3. Georgia
4. Texas Tech
5. Oregon
6. Ole Miss
7. Texas A&M
8. Oklahoma
9. Alabama
10. Notre Dame
11. BYU
12. Miami
13. Texas
14. Vanderbilt
15. Utah
16. USC
17. Virginia
18. Arizona
19. Michigan
20. Tulane
21. Houston
22. Georgia Tech
23. Iowa
24. North Texas
25. James Madison
