College Football Playoff: 4 biggest snubs after bracket reveal

The 12-team College Football Playoff bracket has been revealed, and not everyone is going to be happy about it. A wild weekend of conference championship games threw the final rankings into flux, with Virginia’s shocking loss to Duke leaving the ACC out of the picture, while Alabama dug its own grave by getting smoked by Georgia in the SEC Championship Game for its third loss of the season.

Indiana, Georgia, Ohio State, and Texas Tech are the top seeds in the College Football Playoff as expected. The bottom of the bracket saw Group of 5 powerhouses Tulane and James Madison get in over power conference teams with multiple losses. There’s going to be some angry fans in the state of Indiana and in the Big 12 right now, but that’s life in this era of college football that suddenly feels a lot like March Madness.

Here’s the four biggest snubs from the CFP bracket reveal for 2025-2026.

The committee picked three-loss Alabama over Notre Dame, and it’s bound to be the subject of intense scrutiny in the coming days. The Irish were left out despite ending the year on a 10-game winning streak, but sadly the two losses to start the season doomed them. Notre Dame lost by three to Miami to start the year, and the committee rightfully picked the Hurricanes to make the bracket. The Irish lost a heartbreaker by one-point to Texas A&M in their next game, and going undefeated the rest of the way wasn’t enough to get them into the bracket. Notre Dame is the first team left out. It’s hard to believe.

BYU knew it was probably playing for its playoff hopes when it entered the Big 12 Championship game against Texas Tech. The Red Raiders took care of business in a blowout victory, and it has BYU on the outside looking in. The Cougars only lost to Texas Tech this season, but those two defeats came by a final score of 63-14. There’s still some good news for BYU: it kept head coach away from Penn State Kalani Sitake away from Penn State, and its basketball program is really good with A.J. Dybantsa. Just wait for March Madness, Cougars fans.

You knew Vanderbilt was desperate when its start quarterback was asking Donald Trump for help to get his team into the playoff. Diego Pavia’s desperation didn’t work, and the two-loss Commodores are out of the final bracket. Vandy lost to Alabama and Texas this season, and while there’s normally no shame in that, both of those programs had three loss seasons, and that’s not good enough for a backdoor entrance into the bracket. Vandy’s win over top-10 LSU felt special at the time, but the way the Tigers collapsed down the stretch made it less impressive. Same goes for their wins over Tennessee and Missouri, who both lost four games this year. This was a great season of Vandy football, but it wasn’t quite good enough.

Utah was very good in the Big 12 this season, but they weren’t quite as good as Texas Tech or BYU. The 10-2 Utes lost by 24 points to Texas Tech, then lost a three-point heartbreaker to the Cougars later in the season. Utah had some nice wins along the way with victories over Cincinnati and Arizona State, but its resume just wasn’t strong enough to get in.