Bill ConnellyNov 2, 2025, 06:45 PM ETCloseBill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.Follow on X
Finebaum: Miami always finds a way to lose in November (0:34)Paul Finebaum explains why he wasn’t surprised that Miami lost to SMU. (0:34)
play0:26Trajan Sinatra makes 50-yard field goalTrajan Sinatra makes 50-yard field goal
A hypothetical playoff simulation, because why not?
Week 10 didn’t give us quite as many absolute disasters as it could have, and the damage was mostly contained to the increasingly chaotic ACC. And with two-thirds of the 2025 college football season done, we now shift into Playoff Hyperdrive.
Let’s look back on Week 10 with help from the construct I used for the Week 10 preview: Playoff Tiers.
The first College Football Playoff rankings of the season come out Tuesday, and using a combination of the Allstate Playoff Predictor and odds driven by my SP+ rankings, we can pretty easily bunch teams into groups of playoff likelihood. The tiers didn’t change all that much this weekend, though conveniently, each team that lost fell into the tier below.
Indiana (9-0, 99.5% average playoff odds) — def. Maryland 55-10 Saturday Ohio State (8-0, 99.3%) — def. Ohio State 38-14 Texas A&M (8-0, 95.7%)
Ole Miss (8-1, 83.6%) — def. South Carolina 30-14 Oregon (7-1, 75.6%) Alabama (7-1, 74.0%) BYU (8-0, 69.3%) Texas Tech (8-1, 68.5%) — def. Kansas State 43-20 Georgia (7-1, 54.1%) — def. Florida 24-20
Notre Dame (6-2, 41.1%) — def. Boston College 25-10 Virginia (8-1, 37.6%) — def. California 31-21 Louisville (7-1, 37.1%) — def. Virginia Tech 28-16 Texas (7-2, 33.5%) — def. Vanderbilt 34-31 Georgia Tech (8-1, 30.2%) — lost to NC State 48-36
Tier 3 is evidently the transition tier. Of last week’s four Tier 3 teams, one moved up with a win (Texas Tech), and two moved down with losses (Miami, Vanderbilt). Meanwhile, it caught Georgia Tech on the way down and Texas on the way up. And with all the other chaos in the ACC, two one-loss teams that won as favorites Saturday (Virginia and Louisville) saw their conference title odds rise by solid amounts. They also moved up from Tier 4.
Oklahoma (7-2, 27.0%) — def. Tennessee 33-27 Vanderbilt (7-2, 26.8%) — lost to Texas 34-31 Utah (7-2, 24.2%) — def. Cincinnati 45-14 Miami (6-2, 17.9%) — lost to SMU 26-20 USC (6-2, 14.0%) — def. Nebraska 21-17 Washington (6-2, 13.6%) Missouri (6-2, 10.7%) Michigan (7-2, 10.5%) — def. Purdue 21-16 Pitt (7-2, 6.9%) — def. Stanford 35-20 Duke (5-3, 6.4%) — def. Clemson 46-45 Iowa (6-2, 6.0%) SMU (6-3, 5.7%) — def. Miami 26-20
Still, it’s clear the American winner, whoever it ends up being, is most likely to score the bid even if JMU’s odds are better than any single team.
For the past couple of years, I’ve been fiddling with what amounts to a BCS-ish formula, derived half from the AP poll and half from a combination of both computer power ratings (SP+ and FPI) and computer rĂ©sumĂ© ratings (RĂ©sumĂ© SP+ and Strength of Record). With a few exceptions — Alabama over Florida State in 2023, SMU over Alabama in 2024 — it tends to adhere pretty closely to what the committee ends up deciding.
Tuesday’s rankings will be the first since the CFP committee began using “enhanced metrics to help evaluate schedule strength,” however. What does that mean in practice? I have no idea. So in anticipation of Tuesday’s release, let’s look at four rankings for the teams most likely to be ranked by the committee: 1) their AP poll ranking; 2) their ranking in this BCS-ish formula; 3) their Strength of Record ranking and 4) their RĂ©sumĂ© SP+ ranking.
All in all, I think the top 11 on Tuesday should end up looking almost identical to the AP poll, while the spots from No. 12 to No. 21 could end up in pretty much any order.
Based on where teams are most likely to rank this week (via the BCS-ish rankings above) and which teams are currently most likely to win their conferences (per SP+), here’s what I’m going to call Week 11’s playoff bracket.
Hypothetical title odds based on the above bracket: 1-seed Ohio State 30.6% 2-seed Indiana 28.2% 6-seed Oregon 12.4% 3-seed Texas A&M 7.4% 4-seed Alabama 6.8% 9-seed Texas Tech 5.6% 5-seed Georgia 3.0% 10-seed Notre Dame 2.4% 7-seed Ole Miss 1.7% 8-seed BYU 1.1% 11-seed Louisville 0.4% 12-seed North Texas 0.2%
And because odds alone aren’t very satisfying, I grabbed a random simulation from the batch of 10,000. Here’s what’s officially going to happen this postseason. You can stop watching now.
FIRST ROUND Texas Tech over BYU in Provo Georgia over North Texas in Athens Oregon over Louisville in Eugene Notre Dame over Ole Miss in Oxford
If you Google Indiana’s Curt Cignetti, as he told you to a couple of years ago, it might soon tell you that he’s a national title-winning head coach.
But since Cristobal took over at Miami in 2022, his Hurricanes have lost five games as double-digit favorites; only Alabama can match that total, and (A) Bama has been a double-digit favorite 50% more often and (B) three of the Tide’s five such losses came in a small cluster of games last season. Cristobal has lost at least one such game each year that he’s been in charge. Death, taxes and Miami suffering a catastrophic loss it should have put away.
Holy (whistle) smokes (whistle), Arkansas (whistle). Generally speaking, penalties and penalty yards don’t correlate to wins and losses as much as you might think. Committing a lot of penalties can often signify that you’re properly pushing the limits from an aggressiveness standpoint, and of the 66 teams to have suffered more than 100 penalty yards in a game this season, 38 ended up winning the game.
Close games will define the rest of November, too. Texas A&M (5-0 in SEC play) has two road games with a projected margin of less than two points, and despite being pretty close to the finish line the Aggies have higher odds of losing two or more in November (27%) than reaching 12-0 (25%).
Alabama (5-0) has three conference games remaining, and all three are projected within single digits, two within one score. SP+ gives the Tide only a 25% chance of winning its four remaining games, with 26% odds of losing at least twice.
Georgia’s odds, meanwhile, are almost identical — the Bulldogs (5-1) have two projected one-score SEC games remaining (at Mississippi State, Texas), plus a one-score visit to Georgia Tech. The result: a 25% chance of winning out and a 30% chance of losing at least twice.
Texas (4-1) actually looked the part for most of Saturday’s win over Vanderbilt, but the Longhorns are projected underdogs in two of three remaining games (at Georgia, Texas A&M), and Arkansas is not a gimme. Odds of winning out: 15%.
There are plenty of other teams staggering and/or falling at the moment – Syracuse, Penn State, Louisiana-Monroe, Delaware, Maryland, Texas State, Bowling Green – but CU leads the pack. And if the Buffs can’t beat West Virginia in Morgantown this coming weekend, a 3-9 finish begins to look awfully likely. Would that increase the odds of Deion Sanders stepping down at the end of the season?
The SP+ rankings are updated for the week. Let’s take a look at the teams that saw the biggest change in their overall ratings. (Note: We’re looking at ratings, not rankings.)
Meanwhile, this is the faintest of praise, but since bottoming out at 103rd in SP+ three weeks ago, North Carolina has rallied to 89th, suffering a pair of gut-wrenching losses and finally getting off the schneid with a thumping of quarterback-less Syracuse. The Tar Heels will have to pull at least a pair of upsets to have any hope of bowling, but improvement can be encouraging in and of itself.
Georgia Tech entered Week 10 as the lowest-ranked unbeaten power-conference team by a comfortable margin. After getting pushed around by NC State, the Yellow Jackets are lodged between 4-5 Auburn and James Madison in SP+.
I am once again awarding the Heisman every week of the season and doling out weekly points, F1-style (in this case, 10 points for first place, 9 for second and so on). How will this Heisman race play out, and how different will the result be from the actual Heisman voting?
1. Jeff Sims, Arizona State (13-for-24 passing for 177 yards, 1 TD and 1 INT, plus 228 non-sack rushing yards and 2 TDs against Iowa State).
3. CJ Bailey, NC State (24-for-32 passing for 340 yards and 2 touchdowns, plus 41 non-sack rushing yards and a TD against Georgia Tech).
4. Jordan Marshall, Michigan (25 carries for 185 yards and 3 touchdowns, plus 25 receiving yards against Purdue).
6. Jeremiyah Love, Notre Dame (17 carries for 136 yards and 2 touchdowns, plus 30 receiving yards against Boston College).
8. Haynes King, Georgia Tech (25-for-35 passing for 408 yards, 2 TDs and 1 INT, plus 113 non-sack rushing yards and 2 TDs against NC State).
10. Melkart Abou Jaoude, North Carolina (6 tackles, 2.5 TFLs, 2 sacks and 1 forced fumble against Syracuse).
Sims is quite obviously not a Heisman contender, but one of the reasons I love this Heisman of the Week approach is that we can celebrate when guys like Sims do something beautiful. He even topped nearly perfect performances from Julian Sayin and Owen McCown and a gutsy, hobbled game from CJ Bailey.
• Luke Altmyer, Illinois (19-for-31 passing for 235 yards, 4 TDs and 1 INT, plus 95 non-sack rushing yards and a TD against Rutgers).
• Alonza Barnett III, James Madison (12-for-18 passing for 264 yards, 4 TDs and 1 INT, plus 102 non-sack rushing yards and a TD against Texas State).
• Tommy Castellanos, Florida State (12-for-16 passing for 271 yards and a touchdown, plus 18 non-sack rushing yards and a TD against Wake Forest).
• Kevin Jennings, SMU (29-for-44 passing for 365 yards and a touchdown, plus a rushing touchdown against Miami).
• Jayden Scott, NC State (24 carries for 196 yards and a touchdown, plus 11 receiving yards against Georgia Tech).
Through 10 weeks, here are your points leaders. I’ve bolded the guys who are also in the top 12 in the current Heisman betting odds.