ESPN analyst ‘leaks’ College GameDay decision which has major impact on Pat McAfee for CFP

The College Football Playoff is just days away from kicking off.

With the final CFP bracket set and the top-12 teams revealed, all that’s left to announce is where the ESPN College GameDay crew will stop.

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This year, just like last year, ESPN and TNT hold the rights to broadcast the extended postseason run.

Whilst ESPN’s popular pre-game show’s first destination has yet to be officially revealed, analyst Stanford Steve may have jumped the gun and announced it.

On the latest episode of ESPN’s SVPod hosted by Scott Van Pelt, Steve all but confirmed that GameDay will be first heading to Norman on Friday night to host the pre-show for No. 9 Alabama’s trip to No. 8 Oklahoma.

“Yeah, I’m going to guess we’re going to double-dip again for game day,” Steve said. “Alabama at Oklahoma is going to be the Friday night game, the 19th.

“Miami-A&M is going to be the noon game on Saturday, the 20th. TNT will get two Tulane-Miss and James Madison at Oregon.”

With this information, it looks extremely likely that Pat McAfee, Kirk Herbstreit, Nick Saban and co’s second stop will be at College Station on Saturday, where they will cover the noon game of No. 10 Miami and No. 7 Texas A&M.

CFP bracket drew huge controversy

But when the CFP bracket was revealed on Sunday – with Heisman favorite Fernando Mendoza and the Indiana Hoosier’s the No. 1 seed – it was not without some controversy.

With Alabama suffering a 28-7 blowout defeat to the Georgia Bulldogs in the SEC Championship Game, many argued a case for the Crimson Tide not being included in the top-12 altogether.

However, the CFP committee announced them as the No. 9 seed – not dropping a single place from the penultimate rankings.

“This is the worst selection committee we’ve ever had,” NBC Sports’ Nicole Auerbach posted on X. “Cannot believe Alabama didn’t even drop one spot after the SEC title game blowout.

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“Cannot believe they waited until the final reveal to flip Miami-ND. Could have done it at ANY point.”

But CFP chairman Hunter Yurachek said of the committee’s decision to include Alabama, “We evaluated all those conference championship games.

“We felt like in the end, regardless of Alabama’s performance yesterday, their body of work in those first 12 games where they had probably the best win arguably this season winning at No. 3 Georgia, having a win against Vanderbilt, win against Tennessee as well.

“Their strength of schedule was the highest in the top 11. We felt in spite of their performance yesterday in the conference championship, they deserved to stay in that nine spot.”

There was also Miami jumping into the No. 10 seed and leapfrogging last year’s finalists Notre Dame and BYU who both missed out entirely, with the likes of former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky of the belief that the Fighting Irish should have made it in over Alabama.

Saban even debated whether Group of Five teams should have been included at all.

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Full College Football Playoff bracket

Notre Dame did not make the CFP cut, but 12 other teams did. Check out the full bracket below.

First round:
No. 9 Alabama at No. 8 Oklahoma
No. 10 Miami at No. 7 Texas A&M
No. 11 Tulane at No. 6 Ole Miss
No. 12 James Madison at No. 5 Oregon

Quarterfinals:
Cotton Bowl: No. 10 Miami or No. 7 Texas A&M vs No. 2 Ohio State
Orange Bowl: No. 12 James Madison or No. 5 Oregon vs No. 4 Texas Tech
Rose Bowl: No. 9 Alabama or No. 8 Oklahoma vs No. 1 Indiana
Sugar Bowl: No. 11 Tulane or No. 6 Ole Miss vs No. 3 Georgia

Semifinals:
Fiesta Bowl: Sugar Bowl winner vs Cotton Bowl winner
Peach Bowl: Orange Bowl winner vs Rose Bowl winner

National championship (Monday, January 19):
Fiesta Bowl winner vs Peach Bowl winner

“The fact of the matter is all three of those teams should’ve gotten in and deserve the right to play in the College Football Playoff,” Saban said of his former team Alabama, Miami and Notre Dame.

“For years now, we have quite tweaking the criteria on how we select teams to be in the playoff whether it was a two-team BCS, whether it was a four-team playoff and now a 12-team playoff.

“Really, I think you’re going to have two teams in the playoff, no disrespect to the Group of Five, that are no where near ranked as highly as some other teams that are much better than them.”

There was also no room for Arch Manning and the Texas Longhorns, who sparked debate due to having a tougher out-of-conference schedule than some of the other teams that made the top-12.

Their omission could now indicate the first domino to fall into some other teams softening their schedule to mitigate the opportunity that they fall out of the CFP in the future.

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