The 2025 College Football Playoff formally kicks off at 8 p.m. ET Friday inside Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium with the first-round matchup between No. 8 Oklahoma (10-2) and No. 9 Alabama (10-3). It’s a rematch of their regular-season meeting Nov. 15, which the Sooners won 23-21 in Tuscaloosa.

Oklahoma (10-2) and fourth-year head coach Brent Venables have won two straight against the Crimson Tide and second-year head coach Kalen DeBoer, including a dominating 24-3 victory last season in Norman that effectively doomed Alabama’s CFP chances in 2024. The Sooners hold a 5-2-1 advantage in the all-time series between the budding SEC rivals.

But before the first-round of the College Football Playoff begins this weekend, the CFP is releasing availability reports “to promote the integrity of competition, the wellbeing of student-athletes and institutional staff, and public transparency” beginning Tuesday.

This is the first season the CFP has implemented a policy requiring participating programs to accurately disclose player availability statuses to the public, via a standardized availability report. All participating programs are required to submit availability reports designating whether a player is “available,” “probable,” “questionable,” “doubtful,” or “out” by 8 pm ET three days prior to their Playoff game, with daily updates leading to a final report released 90 minutes prior to kickoff.

Check out Alabama and Oklahoma’s initial Playoff availability report released Tuesday night below:

No. 8 Oklahoma Sooners

No. 9 Alabama Crimson Tide

Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer revealed the latest on several key contributors that have been limited of late, including multiple starters that are expected to return this week: center Parker Brailsford, running back Jam Miller, tight end Josh Cuevas, each of whom sat out the SEC Championship game in Atlanta.

“Parker is doing good, he’s been practicing,” DeBoer said Monday. “Jam, he’s making good progress. Just kind of continue to see how the week goes along. You guys saw him out there doing some things today. Cuevas, very similar to Jam — making progress out there, doing some work. I guess, you’re optimistic at this point. We’ve still got four days left. So, those guys are heading in a good direction, making good progress, and continue to evaluate them moving forward. But you saw them out there doing some things today in practice.”

Meanwhile, Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables revealed Sooners cornerback Gentry Williams will miss the postseason after recently undergoing shoulder surgery, but wasn’t as sure about two other injured starters in defensive end R Mason Thomas and center Jake Maikkula. 

“Gentry had shoulder surgery, so he’ll be out,” Venables said Saturday. “We’ll see on the other guys.”

Thomas has missed Oklahoma’s last three games with a quad injury suffered against Tennessee, while Maikkula missed the regular-season finale against LSU due to an infection.

“They’re two good players. They’re starters. Excellent players,” Venables added. “Jake touches the ball every snap. There’s a lot of impact and influence and things that guy does, and R Mason is one of the more explosive defensive players in the country. If they can play, they can play. If they can’t, they can’t. That’s football.”

— On3’s Griffin McVeigh and Steve Samra contributed to this report.