College Football Playoff bracket revealed: Oregon No. 1 overall, SMU gets in over Alabama (2025)

Follow live updates and reaction to the 12-team College Football Playoff field.

The first 12-team College Football Playoff will include SMU but not Alabama.

The Crimson Tide were the first team out of the field when the selection committee released its final ranking Sunday, setting the bracket for the first expansive, pro-style playoff in the history of major college football: four rounds, 11 games over one month.

“We looked at the number of wins Alabama had against ranked opponents. We looked at SMU’s schedule — they were undefeated in conference. Their losses were to ranked teams. But we also looked at Alabama’s losses to unranked teams. It was quite a debate,” committee chairman Warde Manuel, who is Michigan’s athletic director, said on ESPN’s selection show.

Unbeaten Oregon of the Big Ten will be the No. 1 seed, followed by SEC champion Georgia at No. 2, Mountain West champion Boise State at No. 3 and Big 12 champion Arizona State at No. 4. They will all receive first-round byes to quarterfinals that will be played in traditional bowl games on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.

The first-round games played at campus sites on Dec. 20-21 will be:

No. 5 Texas versus No. 12 Clemson, which earned its bid by winning the ACC on a walk-off 56-yard field goal Saturday night. The first meeting between the Longhorns and Tigers will be played Saturday, Dec. 21. The winner goes on to face Arizona State in the Peach Bowl.

No. 6 Penn State versus No. 11 SMU, which slipped in as the final at-large selection ahead of the Crimson Tide even after its heartbreaking loss to Clemson. The game will be the first of a tripleheader on Saturday, Dec. 21. The winner will face Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl.

No. 7 Notre Dame versus No. 10 Indiana in an infrequently played in-state battle. The Fighting Irish and Hoosiers have played 25 times, but only once (1991) since 1958. The winner goes on to face Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. Notre Dame will host the first game in the new format on Friday night, Dec. 20.

No. 8 Ohio State versus No. 9 Tennessee in an SEC-Big Ten matchup that will be played as the tripleheader nightcap on Dec. 21.The winner plays Oregon in the Rose Bowl.

The semifinals will be played Jan. 9 at the Orange Bowl and Jan. 10 at the Cotton Bowl. The latest championship in college football history will be played Jan. 20 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

After conference championship games were played Friday and Saturday, the only drama that remained for selection Sunday was between Alabama and SMU.

In one corner, the mighty Crimson Tide, with 13 national championships, six since 2009. In the other, the Mustangs, who needed almost four decades to work their way back from the NCAA death penalty to playing power conference football.

After losing 34-31 to Clemson on a last-second field goal in Saturday night’s ACC Championship Game, the Mustangs (11-2) ended up being ranked 10th in the committee’s final Top 25, two spots lower than they were coming into the weekend but one ahead of the Crimson Tide and good enough to grab the final of seven at-large bids.

“When the announcement happened, honestly, I got emotional, just because I’m so happy for our kids,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said on ESPN.

Alabama was ranked higher than No. 12 Arizona State and No. 16 Clemson, but those teams earned their way into the field by winning their conferences.

Alabama (9-3) touted its strength of schedule that included three victories against teams the committee ranked, including SEC champion Georgia. The Crimson Tide also lost twice to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma, neither of which broke .500, in their first season since legendary coach Nick Saban’s retirement.

SMU didn’t beat any teams ranked by the committee, but the Mustangs’ only losses were by a combined five points to BYU and Clemson, with a combined record of 20-5.

“We value strength of schedule, which is why Alabama with three losses is ranked ahead of other two-loss teams,” Manuel said.

In the committee’s final Top 25, the Tide were also ranked ahead of No. 13 Miami (10-2) and No. 17 BYU (10-2).

Alabama made the four-team CFP eight times in 10 years.

A year after Alabama bumped unbeaten Florida State out of the final version of the four-team CFP, the ACC got the benefit of the doubt over coach Kalen DeBoer’s Tide.

“Disappointed with the outcome and felt we were one of the 12 best teams in the country. We had an extremely challenging schedule and recognize there were two games in particular that we did not perform as well as we should have,” Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne posted on X.

The Big Ten put four teams in the field (Oregon, Penn State, Ohio State and Indiana), the SEC three (Georgia, Texas and Tennessee) and the ACC two (Clemson and SMU). The Big 12 was the only Power 4 conference that ended up being a one-bid league.

Required reading

• Oregon rolls through rugged schedule in first Big Ten season. Now, it wants to win it all
• For Boise State, an original giant killer, winning a CFP game would be signature feat
• Georgia will celebrate, but conference title games make no sense in the 12-team CFP era
• The CFP rankings glossary: Game control, body clocks and 12 selection committee translations

(Photo: Isaiah Vazquez / Getty Images)

Ralph Russo is a Senior Writer for The Athletic, covering college football. Before joining The Athletic, he spent 20 years as the lead national college football writer for The Associated Press. He also previously worked as the AP's Mississippi-based sports writer and did a stint with The Denver Post. Ralph is a native New Yorker and a graduate of Fordham University.