If you thought the College Football Playoffs would just forget about the fact that SMU’s berth was revealed ahead of time, you thought wrong.
“I was furious,” CFP director Rich Clark said of the debacle, speaking with USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday. “I told all involved, you’ve betrayed the process.” There has never been a leak like this before, and Clark said there will be an investigation to determine what happened.
“There are only a certain number of people who know,” he continued. “I know one thing, it wasn’t me. There’s the selection committee, ESPN, and our staff. Someone in that group [is the leak].”
The director also revealed that he discovered the bombshell thanks to a text from his son. “He said, ‘Dad, what happened?’ I had no idea what he was talking about until I saw it.”
One minute before the start of Sunday’s selection show, Action Network’s Brett McMurphy shared on X (formerly Twitter) that SMU had received an at-large playoff berth and Alabama had not, despite SMU’s loss to Clemson in the ACC title game. Not long after, it was revealed on air that the Mustangs had, in fact, clinched the final spot.
CFP chair Warde Manuel has since said that, despite the defeat, the committee still believed SMU played well enough to jump Alabama, who was also jockeying for that last opening. “We felt like, in this case, SMU had the nod above Alabama, but it’s no disrespect to Alabama’s strength of schedule,” he said.
The full 12-team playoff field is as follows, with the top four teams listed having received a first-round bye:
- Oregon (Big Ten Champion)
- Georgia (SEC Champion)
- Boise State (Mountain West Champion)
- Arizona State (Big 12 Champion)
- Texas (at-large)
- Penn State (at-large)
- Notre Dame (at-large)
- Ohio State (at-large)
- Tennessee (at-large)
- Indiana (at-large)
- SMU (at-large)
- Clemson (ACC Champion)
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