{"id":79244,"date":"2025-12-07T12:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T12:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/79244\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T12:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T12:34:07","slug":"college-football-playoff-projection-final-12-team-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/79244\/","title":{"rendered":"College Football Playoff projection: Final 12-team predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Championship weekend provided plenty of thrills the past few days. There were surprises, close calls and even some blowouts.<\/p>\n

Will any of it be enough to give the Texas Longhorns a shot at the College Football Playoff<\/a>? They were just outside the field at 13 before the action began. Will Duke slide in after upsetting Virginia in the\u00a0ACC title game? Will Alabama be dinged for managing just one touchdown in a 24-7 collapse against Georgia in the SEC championship? Which Group of Fives are invited?<\/p>\n

Here’s what various national outlets think:<\/p>\n

CBS writer Brad Crawford has the Longhorns as the No. 13 team in his ranking<\/a>. That won’t cut it though, leaving Texas to an also-ran bowl. Tulane is a\u00a0Group of Five choice after its winning the American Conference championship. He thinks James Madison of the Sun Belt Conference sneaks in as well because of the Virginia loss<\/p>\n

Heather Dinich over at ESPN <\/a>has a similar prediction. There seems to be agreement among Tulane and James Madison as the Group of Five picks.<\/p>\n

Who says journalists are biased? Zac Al-Khateeb, a college sports\u00a0editor\u00a0who’s been\u00a0with USA TODAY family of papers for years, is also booting Alabama from his field.<\/a> It’s notable since\u00a0Al-Khateeb graduated with his journalism degree(s) from Bama. Well, maybe a little home-region bias there with Georgia moving up in his ranking (just kidding,\u00a0Zac’s a pro).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Championship weekend provided plenty of thrills the past few days. There were surprises, close calls and even some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[38829,262,20923,35712,23043,27,19650,29,537,536,28],"class_list":["post-79244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-alabama-crimson-tide-football","tag-college-football-playoff","tag-georgia-bulldogs-football","tag-indiana-hoosiers-football","tag-ohio-state-buckeyes-football","tag-texas","tag-texas-a-m-aggies-football","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-texas-longhorns-football","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}