College Football Playoff Teams are Set
07 Dec, 2014
Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State have been selected to play in the first College Football Playoff.
Alabama is the top seed and will play No. 4 Ohio State in one semifinal at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. Oregon is the second seed and will play third-seeded Florida State in the other semifinal at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. Both games will be played New Year’s Day.
The winners will advance to the national championship game to be played Jan. 12 at the home of the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington, Texas.
A 12-member selection committee set the field, revealing its selections Sunday morning. Later in the day, it was expected to complete its full top 25 and make the matchups for the other four New Year’s bowls that are part of the playoff rotation.
Committee chairman Jeff Long said the top three were clear and the final spot came down to a debate between the Buckeyes and Big 12 co-champs Baylor and TCU.
The College Football Playoff is replacing the Bowl Championship Series this season. The BCS matched the top two teams in the country in a national championship game.
The playoff contenders did not make it easy on the committee by all winning on Saturday.
The committee has been ranking the top 25 weekly since late October’s rankings and last week had Alabama and Oregon at the top, followed by TCU and Florida State.
The committee ranks teams differently than traditional college football polls, such as the AP Top 25. Instead of collecting a ballot from each member and tallying votes, the committee ranks small groups by a series of votes. And Long, the athletic director at Arkansas, has said that each week the panel starts with a blank slate.
AP
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