Tony Barnhart
CFP Rankings, Nov. 4
By Tony Barnhart
Thanks to NIL, the transfer portal and a coaching carousel that is beyond belief, the first two months of the 2025 college football season have been the most entertaining I have seen in my 50 years of covering the sport.
Now don’t get me wrong. The game still has problems. NIL is a runaway freight train that only Congress may be able to rein in.
But as dysfunctional as things seem to be off the field, the product we have seen on the field and on television each Saturday is better than it has ever been.
Having said that, let me say this:
Don’t look now brothers and sisters because the game we love is about to give us a November we will always remember.
As that wise philosopher Lane Kiffin once said:
“Get your popcorn.”
It started Tuesday night when the 12-member College Football Playoff Selection Committee released its first rankings of the 2025 season. The committee, made up of former players, coaches, administrators and media, will release the rankings on a weekly basis until Sunday, Dec. 7. That’s when the full 12-team field that makes up the playoff bracket will be released.
The field will be made up of the five highest-rated conference champions plus seven at-large teams that will be chosen by the committee.
The four highest-rated conference champions will receive byes in the first round. Seeds 5, 6, 7, 8 will play seeds 9, 10, 11, and 12 in four first-round games on campus.
After the first round, which will be played on Friday Dec. 19 and Saturday Dec. 20, there will be a quarterfinal round on Dec. 31 and Jan, 1. The semi-finals will be on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9.
The national championship game will be held at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium on Monday, Jan. 19.
The committee rankings have been cloaked in controversy since their inception. That will not change. We will argue about this stuff without fail until the field is named. And then we’ll argue until the games start on Dec. 19.
But in an effort to reduce the human impact on the rankings, the committee will concentrate more on a new and enhanced set of analytics. The SEC began this push back in June during the SEC Meetings in Destin, Fla.
As expected, two Big Ten teams—defending champion Ohio State and Indiana (both undefeated) occupied the first two positions in the rankings. The next two slots went to a pair of SEC teams—No. 3 Texas A&M and No. 4 Alabama.
Here are the projected rankings from the College Football Playoff selection committee. Note that Ohio State and Indiana won’t play unless the two teams meet in the Big Ten championship game on Dec. 6.
No. 1—Ohio State (Big Ten champ)
No. 2—Indiana (Big Ten at-large}
No. 3—Texas A&M (SEC champ)
No. 4—Alabama (SEC at-large)
No. 5—Georgia (SEC at-large)
No. 6—Ole Miss (SEC at-large)
No. 7—BYU (Big 12 champ)
No. 8—Texas Tech (Big 12 at-large)
No. 9—Oregon (Big Ten at-large)
No. 10—Notre Dame (Independent)
No. 11—Texas (SEC at-large)
No. 12—Memphis (Group of Five champ)
Note that the No. 12 slot was reserved for the highest-rated champion of the Group of Five: Sun Belt, Mountain West, Conference USA, American, Mid-American. Memphis of the American is the early projected winner in that group.
If the College Football Playoffs started today, this would be the breakdown of the teams in the field:
SEC (5): Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss, Texas
Big Ten: (3): Ohio State, Indiana, Oregon,
Big 12 (2): BYU, Texas Tech
ACC (1): Virginia (ACC champ)
Independent (1): Notre Dame
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