Bill ConnellyDec 15, 2025, 08:20 AM 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 isn’t buying IU as CFP favorite (0:46)Paul Finebaum explains why Indiana isn’t the College Football Playoff favorite despite its win over Ohio State. (0:46)
The new era of college football features a larger College Football Playoff and a lower bar (and more forgiveness) for inclusion. Meanwhile, the transfer portal and increased freedom of movement for players have meant that today’s best teams can’t quite stockpile awesome backups as easily as they could in the past.
Jon Sumrall’s final Tulane team is adaptable and resilient and certainly clears a physicality bar that not every awesome Group of 5 team might. But the Green Wave’s two losses — 45-10 against first-round opponent Ole Miss, 48-26 at UTSA — were a sign that when things go awry, the ceiling is much, much lower than what we might expect from a playoff team.
The first official bid thieves of the 12-team era, Dabo Swinney’s Tigers looked like their hopes were finished after an end-of-regular-season loss to South Carolina. But upsets elsewhere placed them in the ACC championship game, and they won the league with a last-second field goal. That gave them a shot at Texas in the CFP first round, and although they played well while behind, the game was never truly in doubt.
Rhett Lashlee’s Mustangs made the absolute most of their first power conference campaign in three decades, going 8-0 in the regular season and falling just six points short of a 13-0 start. But they didn’t beat any teams that finished in the SP+ top 20, and they were utterly overwhelmed in the first round in State College, throwing two pick-sixes, suffering countless other miscues and trailing big most of the way.
Mark Dantonio’s 2015 Spartans are proof that no matter what the committee said, it was picking the four “most deserving” teams rather than the four “best” — MSU was definitively the former and in no way the latter. And that’s fine! The Spartans finished 18th in FPI and 15th in SP+ but beat a dynamite Ohio State team and outlasted unbeaten Iowa to win the Big Ten. Then they did exactly what was expected of them against Alabama in the Cotton Bowl: They lost big.
Alabama basically earned its playoff spot in October, beating Georgia, Vanderbilt, Missouri and Tennessee to craft a dynamite résumé. But due primarily to increasing numbers of offensive mistakes, the Tide’s form slipped dramatically. The committee did them a massive favor by completely ignoring poor late performances against Auburn (narrow win) and Georgia (blowout loss). Will Alabama reward the committee for its faith?
The Sooners’ defense is playoff worthy by any definition, and the offense has mastered the art of opportunism — it doesn’t create nearly enough chances, but makes the most of what it creates. Tight November wins over Tennessee and Alabama drove some late résumé boosting, and a clutch, season-ending win over LSU kept Oklahoma in the field. But that offense sure looks like a fatal flaw.
After three years at No. 1, Lincoln Riley’s 2019 Sooners slipped to third in offensive SP+, and the defense wasn’t good enough to make up for this smidgen of offensive mortality. They rolled to 7-0 but stumbled against Kansas State and had to survive four tight wins in their final five games. That was enough to earn the Sooners their fourth CFP appearance in five years, but they got destroyed in the Peach Bowl.
Brian Kelly’s Irish beat Trevor Lawrence-less Clemson in overtime, and behind consensus All-America offensive linemen Aaron Banks and Liam Eichenberg, they proved physical, mature and adaptable while starting the season 10-0. But in their final two games, against a full-strength Clemson team in the ACC championship game and Alabama in the Rose Bowl, the Irish were outscored 65-24.
Curt Cignetti’s first Hoosiers team benefited from a pretty easy Big Ten schedule but won seven games by at least 24 points and finished the regular season second in the country in points per drive and sixth in points allowed per drive. Unfortunately, quarterback Kurtis Rourke’s season-long ACL injury finally caught up to him with a poor CFP performance, and the Hoosiers couldn’t overcome a slow start in South Bend.
The Hurricanes started and finished the season looking the part and overcame a midseason funk that included timid, turnover-plagued losses to Louisville and SMU. A smart, aggressive defense gives them the upside to compete with anyone, and the offense enjoys long runs of efficiency thanks to quarterback Carson Beck and receiver Malachi Toney. Do they have the close-game chops required to make a run? We’ll see.
It’s tricky figuring out where to place a team that didn’t look the part until November, then very much looked the part. As late as Week 12 in 2024, ASU’s playoff odds were minuscule. But the Sun Devils won six straight down the stretch, and star Cam Skattebo almost took them even further. Behind his 242 yards from scrimmage against Texas, they were one play away from the semifinals but fell agonizingly short.
The Seminoles returned lots of key figures from their 2013 national title romp, but they had to eke out tight win after tight win — seven one-score games in all. While the BCS would have given us a Bama-FSU title game that year, the CFP gave the Noles the No. 3 seed and sent them to the Rose Bowl, where a 34-0 Ducks run ended Florida State’s 29-game winning streak in stark fashion.
The Fighting Irish earned their spot in the playoff with increasingly dominant wins over quality Michigan, Stanford and Syracuse teams. The defense was solid and excellent (second in defensive SP+), but the offensive limitations were made crystal clear when the Irish had to face Clemson in the Cotton Bowl. The game was tied after one quarter, but it got much, much worse from there.
The Rebels’ stay in the 2025 playoffs might forever be defined by who wasn’t there — Lane Kiffin left for LSU after the regular season — and they probably don’t have the same raw upside as the 2024 team that fell just short of a bid. But Ole Miss can both run through and pass over opponents, and the only test the Rebels haven’t passed this year is “Can you survive a rugged fourth quarter in Athens?” They’re capable of a run.
Even adjusting for strength of schedule, Luke Fickell’s CFP debutants finished sixth in SP+. The Bearcats physically dominated a strong Notre Dame squad and absolutely earned their playoff spot, and once there, they hemmed in Bryce Young and the Alabama passing attack. The problem: They got gashed by the Bama run game and, more importantly, couldn’t even slightly protect quarterback Desmond Ridder in a Cotton Bowl loss.
OU lost Baker Mayfield but somehow improved offensively. Kyler Murray threw for 4,361 yards and rushed for 1,001, but unfortunately, the defense was dreck. Lincoln Riley fired coordinator Mike Stoops six games in, but the Sooners allowed 44 points per game over their final six contests and gave up 31 first-half points to Alabama in the Orange Bowl. That was too much for even Murray to overcome.
After what might have been Urban Meyer’s most talented Ohio State team missed the CFP in 2015, the most offensively limited one made it the next year. The defense was strong enough to limit Deshaun Watson and Clemson to just two touchdowns in the Tigers’ first 10 drives in the semifinal, but the Buckeyes’ offense, which ranked 20th in offensive SP+ (terrible by their standards), got embarrassed.
You know your program is in great shape when “transition year” means “only making the CFP semis.” The Tigers boasted perhaps the best defense of the Dabo Swinney era, but Deshaun Watson was gone, and Trevor Lawrence wouldn’t arrive in town for another year. Clemson was too good for the rest of the ACC but gained just 188 yards against Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, bowing out slightly earlier than normal.
Nick Saban’s final team was maybe his worst since 2007 and ranked just eighth in the CFP rankings before an SEC championship upset of Georgia. The Tide mastered the art of surviving, advancing and saving their best performance for the most important games. And when they were given a lifeline by snagging a CFP spot over Florida State, they nearly made the most of it, leading eventual champ Michigan into the final two minutes before succumbing in overtime.
A loss to Michigan State set Jim Harbaugh’s Wolverines back early on, but they took down Ohio State for the first time in a decade, then stomped Iowa to win their first outright Big Ten title since 2003. This was an excellent team and the champion of an excellent conference, but the Wolverines ran into a slight problem in the Orange Bowl: They weren’t better than Georgia at a single thing. That will catch up to you.
39. 2024 Penn State (13-3) CFP result: Beat SMU 38-10; beat Boise State 31-14; lost to Notre Dame 27-24 in the Orange Bowl semifinal
James Franklin’s Penn State tenure was defined by an extreme ability to control the controllables and a failure to rise to the biggest occasions. The Nittany Lions beat SMU and Boise State as comfortable favorites to reach the 2024 semis and came achingly close to beating Notre Dame. But they came up short, and their attempt to keep the band together and go all-in in 2025 crumpled to the ground too.
37. 2022 TCU (13-2) CFP result: Defeated Michigan 51-45; lost to Georgia 65-7 in the national championship
Heisman runner-up Max Duggan and the Horned Frogs were close-game masters, winning five one-score games during a 12-0 start and losing only to a top-10 Kansas State team in the Big 12 championship. Their big-play ability and volatility were fully on display in the CFP, where they pulled off an upset of Michigan in maybe the best game of 2022, then got absolutely trounced by Georgia in the national title game.
36. 2024 Texas (13-3) CFP result: Beat Clemson 38-24; beat Arizona State 39-31; lost to Ohio State 28-14 in the Cotton Bowl semifinal