Miami is the first team out in the penultimate 2024 College Football Playoff rankings. With Arizona State or Iowa State ranked below Miami and playing in the Big XII Championship Game the Sun Devils or Cyclones will pass the 12th ranked Hurricanes for the final CFP berth on Sunday.
The controversy is three loss Alabama being ranked ahead of Miami. Miami has two losses on the road by a total of nine points. The Hurricanes are 4-2 overall on the road with one of those losses at 22nd ranked, 9-3 Syracuse. Alabama has three losses, all on the road by a total of 33 points.
The other loss by Miami was at 7-5 Georgia Tech who lost at Georgia in eight overtimes on Friday. Alabama beat Georgia. Would the rankings have been different if Georgia Tech had beaten Georgia? That is not a question that was asked of CFP committee chair Warde Manuel who discussed Miami's position in the rankings.
CFP rankings reveal host Rece Davis and Manuel had a misunderstanding that took multiple questions to clarify the decision by the committee to rank Alabama ahead of Miami. Media and Miami administrators and coaches have stated the Hurricanes' case for the CFP. Manuel's comments are below.
"The committee ranked Alabama one ahead of Miami, but it doesn't diminish how we see Miami, even with the last three weeks they have two losses. We still think Miami is a very strong team...It came down to a difference in their body of work as we evaluated Alabama and Miami, not just wins, not just losses but the totality of the season and how those teams performed....
Miami, top offense in the country with 44 points and over 500 yards per game. So it's really close. It's not just one datapoint over the other. We just try to take a look -- not try; we do take a look at their body of work to evaluate them and make decisions...As we evaluated them, that's how the vote came out in terms of Miami, Mississippi and then South Carolina.
We've already evaluated their resume and we've included the fact that they've beat those teams in our analysis of how we see Miami. The fact that they would get a bump because now those teams are in the top 25 after that happens is not something that we will do...We have already evaluated those teams and recognize that Miami has beat Louisville and Duke.
So that's already in our analysis in the process of how we've talked about them and where they're ranked. So whether they come into the top 25, we're not going backwards and re-ranking teams based on who wins or who loses in the championship game."
There is a lot to break down from the comments from Manuel. It appears the committee values marquee wins over questionable losses. Alabama had a five-point loss at 6-6 Vanderbilt and was defeated 24-3 at 6-6 Oklahoma two weeks ago. Alabama beat 5-7 Auburn and FCS Mercer in the last three weeks of the 2024 season.
The other loss for Alabama was to Tennessee who is firmly in the CFP. The comments about Duke and Louisville is selective on which wins matter. Louisville is 13th in the ESPN Football Power Index which is significantly higher than the human rankings. The results of this weekend will not impact idle teams in the CFP rankings per Manuel.
Some teams could move based on the results in the Conference Championship games. If Boise State and/or Clemson win the Mountain West and ACC Championship games this week, Alabama could lose their CFP at-large berth. A Clemson win would almost definitely eliminate Alabama with SMU higher ranked than the Crimson Tide.
The resumes for Alabama and Miami speak for themselves. The second-guessing from the Miami football program will likely be more on the losses at Georgia Tech and Syracuse. If Miami wins either of those games they would be playing SMU for the ACC Championship on Saturday and have likely secured a CFP berth win or lose.