The previous caveat with the 2025 College Football Playoff rankings that it was still early is gone.<\/p>\n
With just two weeks remaining in the regular season, it is magnified even more when teams such as Alabama and Texas fall after losses and programs such as Georgia and Oklahoma rise after wins<\/p>\n
Here is a look at the latest edition of the rankings, which was released Tuesday and looks somewhat different from the projected bracket since the highest-ranked conference champions earn automatic bids. The four highest-ranked overall teams will also receive first-round byes, regardless of their conference-championship status.<\/p>\n
As has been the case for much of the season, the SEC was under the spotlight during the latest slate of games.<\/p>\n
While Alabama has done an admirable job of working its way back from an ugly season-opening loss to a Florida State team that is tied for 14th place in the ACC, it lost its margin for error with Saturday’s 23-21 defeat to Oklahoma.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Tide now have two losses and will be under tremendous pressure in the season finale against 4-6 Auburn. They likely wouldn’t be able to afford a third loss, especially with two of them coming against mediocre or bad football teams in Florida State and Auburn, and still make the 12-team field.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Texas added that fateful third loss to its resume with a 35-10 blowout defeat to Georgia. While there is no shame in losing to the Bulldogs, losing by four scores won’t help Texas’ case.<\/p>\n
Two of the Longhorns’ three losses came against two of the nation’s elite teams in Ohio State and Georgia, but their third came to 3-7 Florida. That may be the difference in their CFP hopes even if they do prevail against Texas A&M\u2014which remained undefeated with a dramatic comeback against South Carolina\u2014to end the season.<\/p>\n
Outside of the SEC, much of this week’s intrigue came from the Group of Five conferences.<\/p>\n
There will be a CFP spot available to one of them since the five highest-ranked conference champions make the field, and it seemed like South Florida had the inside track after being ranked last week and with wins over Boise State and Florida on its resume.<\/p>\n
However, Navy defeated the Bulls 41-38 in a high-scoring thriller to potentially open the door for a contender such as James Madison, North Texas or Tulane to seize that Group of Five spot depending on how the rest of the season unfolds.<\/p>\n
All eyes now turn toward Saturday, although there aren’t many headliner games on paper with rivalry week looming.<\/p>\n
The most impactful matchup is the one between Oregon and USC in the Big Ten. The Ducks likely control their own destiny with their only loss coming to undefeated Indiana, but a second defeat would put them in significant peril. And the Trojans are one of the two-loss teams that can jump into the CFP picture with a strong finish.<\/p>\n
A win over Oregon would be exactly the type of massive statement the selection committee is looking for, and it would also likely put them ahead of the Ducks in the two-loss pecking order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The previous caveat with the 2025 College Football Playoff rankings that it was still early is gone. With…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-301088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}