The Penultimate College Football Playoff rankings have just been announced and there are plenty of storylines and scenarios to talk about. But let’s start with the teams that have been pushing propaganda for their teams for weeks now.
Texas & Miami
Texas and Miami your CFP hopes are dead. It was really nice how everyone of your fans, alumni and even prominent media members tried to push your case for the CFP. I mean Kirk Herbstreit made a sweeping proclamation on “X” today about the future of scheduling based on how “unfairly” Texas was being treated in all of this.
If you would like to see Miami’s case to be included it will be running for close to 48 hours straight on Thursday, December 4th and Friday, December 5th on the ACC Network. With that being the replay of the week one matchup between Miami and Notre Dame, a game Miami won 27-24.
Those efforts were futile at best as Texas sits at 13 and Miami is ranked 12th. Both of those ranking will leave them out of the CFP as the committee will have to include at least 2 conference champions not currently in the top-12.
Now we turn our attention to all of the different playoff scenario’s team by team
UPDATE: Miami is currently still alive in the playoff hunt. Last night, College Football Playoff Chairman Hunter Yurachek said two things that feel like Miami will be in if Texas Tech were to beat BYU Saturday. He alluded to that by saying idle teams are still moveable after this week’s results and that if two teams were to be ranked back to back (ex., Notre Dame at 10 and Miami at 11) that head head-to-head will play a stronger role. These words lead me to believe that they would move BYU back if they lost, putting Miami and Notre Dame next to each other, allowing Miami to sneak in.
James Madison
This is the one that will feel like a chaos scenario for a lot of people. What if we have 2 G5 teams in the playoff? We are not far away.
All JMU has to do is beat Troy in the Sun Belt Championship and then have Duke beat Virginia in the ACC Title game.
The odds on those happening are as follows, JMU is currently a 23.5 point favorite against Troy, while Duke is a 3.5 point underdog against Virginia.
North Texas & Tulane
Both teams will be coming into the AAC (American Athletic Conference) Title game with coaches that are headed elsewhere. Jon Sumrall Tulane’s Head Coach is set to be the Head man at Florida next year. As for Eric Morris North Texas’ Head Coach he recently accepted the Head job at Oklahoma State.
With that storyline out of the way the path for these two teams is simple: Win and you’re in.
North Texas is currently a 2.5 point favorite over Tulane. ESPN Analytics currently gives them a 58% chance to win.
Virginia
Same case as Tulane and North Texas. Beat Duke and you are in the College Football Playoff.
Whether they do or don’t win Tony Elliot deserves a lot of credit for the 2025 Cavaliers they have found ways to win all year.
Virginia is currently a 3.5 point favorite over the Duke Blue Devils. ESPN Analytics gives them a 56.3% chance to take home the ACC crown.
BYU
What a week it could be for the cougars. Today they were able to retain their Head Coach Kalani Sitake as he signed a long-term extension to stay with the Cougars and with comes a larger financial investment into the football program as a whole. That ended the period of time where he was believed to be the next Head Coach at Penn State.
Now for what lies ahead for Sitake’s Cougars. If they beat Texas Tech in the Big 12 Title game then they will be playoff bound. With a loss they will be on the outside looking in as they sit at 11 in the latest rankings meaning they would be bounced for the conference champions that must be included in the bracket.
But they now have the potential for head coach retention, Big 12 Title and CFP birth in the same week.
BYU are currently 12.5 point underdogs against Texas Tech this week. ESPN Analytics give the Cougars a 33.4% chance to beat Texas Tech
Notre Dame
Congratulations Notre Dame you beat all of the propaganda Miami had been throwing your way the last couple months. Bad news is that you’ll never be Alabama in the committee’s eyes. The Crimson Tide jumped the Irish after they beat Auburn 27-20 in the Iron Bowl. What did Notre Dame do to get jumped you might ask? They went on the road and beat Stanford 49-20.
Now I will make the concession that by the numbers this is a correct move. But if it was always right then why did the committee have them ranked behind the Irish after their loss to Oklahoma. If they believed that Alabama was better they should have put them there in the first place. Since they didn’t it opens the committee up to rightful criticism and more of the “SEC bias” argument.
But I digress. For Notre Dame they will have their guns up on Saturday in hopes that Texas Tech will handle their business in the BIG 12 Title game. The only way Notre Dame is on the outside looking in come Sunday is if BYU were to win.
Side note: I think there is a possibility that Alabama could be punished for losing the SEC Title only if Georgia were to run them out of the building. But based on precedent I’m still not sure that would do it.
Ole Miss
Congratulations Ole Miss, you survived the Lane Kiffin saga. Not only did you do that, you then survived the College Football Playoff committee. I’ll admit I was worried when Arkansas’ AD and current CFP committee chairman Hunter Yurachek hinted at punishing the Rebels if Kiffin were to leave. That did not happen and you will host a playoff game in a couple weeks
Rankings
1.Ohio State
2.Indiana
3.Georgia
4.Texas Tech
5.Oregon
6.Ole Miss
7.Texas A&M
8.Oklahoma
9.Alabama
10.Notre Dame
11.BYU
12.Miami
13.Texas
14.Vanderbilt
15.Utah
16.USC (Southern California)
17.Virginia
18.Arizona
19.Michigan
20.Tulane
21.Houston
22.Georgia Tech
23.Iowa
24.North Texas
25.James Madison
