College Football Playoff Showdown: Which Underdog Could Upend the Race in Week 13?

Alright, football fans, buckle up — we’re just two weeks shy of the regular season’s curtain call, and the College Football Playoff picture? It’s still as wild and tangled as ever. Twenty-nine teams, plus a scattershot group of hopefuls who might as well be ghosts, are all jockeying for a spot in that elusive 12-team dance come December. You ever wonder if the selection committee plays some kind of cosmic ranking roulette or if they’ve cracked the code? Well, their latest rankings dropped Tuesday night, shaking up the tiers and stirring the pot. From teams comfortably lounging in their playoff spots to those clinging onto barely-there lifelines, I’ve broken down the landscape into neat little groups — or as neat as this rollercoaster can get. Curious who’s already packing and who’s praying for miracles? Let’s dive in and see which squads have a sure thing, which ones need to take care of business, and who’s teetering on the edge of heartbreak. Ready to decode the chaos? LEARN MORE.

With a new set of rankings from the College Football Playoff selection committee, we’ve updated our tiers of teams that could make up the 12-team field come December.

With two weeks left in the regular season, 29 teams have a nonzero shot at the College Football Playoff.

After the selection committee released a fresh batch of rankings on Tuesday night, here’s what we know about where those 29 teams (plus a few more that are ranked but not really alive) stand. 

I’ve tiered out who fits into which group.

Already in the CFP

These teams would all make the field even if they didn’t win again between now and Selection Sunday.

As 10- and 11-win teams from the Big Ten and SEC, they can rest easy – or, at least, as easy as one can rest while their coach makes a public show of considering leaving for LSU or Florida. 

Three of these teams (all but Ole Miss) will likely get three of the four first-round byes. 

Already in, Barring a Stunning Turn of Events

As long as it doesn’t lose arguably the biggest upset in college football history this weekend against Charlotte, Georgia will have a spot clinched before it faces No. 16 Georgia Tech to close the season.

There is almost no chance Texas Tech loses to West Virginia in its lone remaining game, and as long as the Red Raiders avoid disaster there, they won’t even need to win the Big 12 Championship to get a spot.

The committee is justifiably enamored with them and wouldn’t bounce the Red Raiders based on a title-game result unless they were to get blown out of the water. That won’t happen, so they’re safe. 

Notre Dame is the edge case, but it’s clear that the committee likes the Irish. Their remaining games are against Syracuse and Stanford, and Notre Dame will be favored by 30-plus points in both.

I don’t love that a 10-2 Notre Dame will clearly finish ahead of a 10-2 Miami that beat ND, but I do understand it, given how dominant the Irish have been since that narrow loss on the road in Week 1.

The Irish have a 97.2% chance of winning out, according to the Opta supercomputer, as well as a 99.8 playoff potential rating. Teams at 90 or above (max 100) should be the heavy favorites for a playoff spot.

Take Care of Business 

Oregon is in as long as it beats USC at home and Washington on the road. The supercomputer gives the Ducks a 76.9% win probability against the Trojans. But neither of those is a gimme, and put together, there’s around a 50% chance Oregon drops one.

Staying the course against slightly worse teams would do the job for Dan Lanning’s team. 

Oklahoma is in a similar boat. The Sooners will get in as long as they beat Missouri and LSU, both at home. Again, it’s not easy in a year of intense parity, but their work is cut out for them. 

Alabama is still win-and-in despite losing to Oklahoma at home last week. After a warmup against FCS Eastern Illinois, the Tide will “just” need to beat Auburn in a night Iron Bowl at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

That could put Alabama in the SEC Championship, but playing in that game would only be house money for Bama, not a chance to drop out of the bracket. 

The Opta supercomputer assigns these chances of winning out: Oregon at 52.4%, Oklahoma at 56.6% and Alabama at 70.9%. Given those odds, they’re probably not all winning out. 

Probably in Control, but it’ll be Hard

BYU is the only team in this tier with a guarantee if it wins out. The Cougars control their fate in the Big 12 race. But to get in, they would probably need to win a Big 12 Championship rematch with a Texas Tech team that already destroyed them in Lubbock.

The tiers above this one feature 10 teams, none of which will knock each other out head-to-head. So, a few teams with great cases could get bounced. (That’s before we even deal with finding a spot for the ACC champion and top-ranked Group of Five champ.) 

Probably, though, a few teams in the tiers above will falter. That would leave an opportunity for any of these next three teams, should they win out and finish 10-2 in a Power Two league: Vanderbilt (with Kentucky and Tennessee still to come), USC (with Oregon and UCLA) and Michigan (with Maryland and Ohio State). 

The team that’s least secure here is Vanderbilt, which wouldn’t have any great wins even if it stays firm. USC and Michigan would make big jumps by beating Oregon and Ohio State, respectively. 

The chances to win out for each team in this section, according to the supercomputer: BYU at 50.2% (not counting a championship game), Vanderbilt at 35.4%, USC at 22.1% and Michigan at 7.9%. 

The ACC Title Race

Georgia Tech has a slim chance of making the playoff even if it doesn’t win the ACC, but only a slim one. (That would mean beating Georgia, then losing to whichever team it plays the next week.)

Otherwise, the teams in this tier need to win out and, in some cases, get the help they need to get to Charlotte.

Virginia has the next-simplest path to the title game, with SMU and Pitt jockeying behind the Cavaliers. Miami is also technically alive in the conference race but has a much better playoff shot as an at-large team.  

The Group of Five Spot 

• Tulane 
• North Texas  
• East Carolina
• USF  
• Navy
• James Madison

The American Conference’s tiebreakers are an affront to God and aren’t worth sorting through today, because they rely on computer rankings that won’t be set until Selection Sunday.

Complicating matters further, none of the league contenders play each other the rest of the way. North Texas and Tulane have the clearest paths, in that order. Whichever team wins this conference will claim the Group of Five’s playoff spot unless that team wins the conference with three losses and opens a door for one-loss JMU of the Sun Belt.

Given the matchups the rest of the way in the American, that isn’t likely. 

Likely First Teams Out 

• Utah  
• Miami 
• Texas  

Utah and Miami are both right on the edge of the field for now, but they’re still on the verge of getting jumped by both an ACC team and the top-ranked G5 team.

The remaining matchups for Utah (Kansas State, Kansas) and Miami (Virginia Tech, Pitt) suggest that both will finish 10-2. But, they’re both poised to get boxed out of their conference championship games and lack a chance at another big win.

These teams wouldn’t jump anyone ahead of them that wins out, and they’d have to worry about a 10-2 SEC or Big Ten team cutting the line. The likeliest case? The Utes and Canes get close but don’t get a cigar. 

Texas, at No. 17, is harder to figure out. No other three-loss team has a serious chance at the playoff, but Texas finishing 9-3 would mean ending the year with a win against undefeated Texas A&M. In that case, the committee would see Texas as a team that has arguably the best win of any team in the country, has three top-25 wins and would’ve been 10-2 if it decided to open its season against the Ohio Bobcats instead of Ohio State.

I think the Longhorns clearly have a better chance than the two-loss teams ranked ahead of them in this tier. Boy, would that be a fight. 

The supercomputer gives Utah an 84.0% chance of staying clean the rest of the way, Miami 62.8% and Texas 38.7%. (The Longhorns also have to avoid tripping up against a bad but prickly Arkansas team.) 

Big 12 Life Support 

• Houston
• Arizona State 

The Cougars and Sun Devils are still alive, barely, in the labyrinth of Big 12 tiebreaker scenarios. You can safely ignore them for playoff purposes, but I’m including them here to be a completionist. 

Ranked, But Out 

• Tennessee
• Illinois  
• Missouri

Nice seasons for these teams, but nobody has a path into the bracket even if everything breaks their way. 

For more coverage, follow along on social media on Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook and X.

The post College Football Playoff Tiers: Where the Teams Still Alive Stand Heading into Week 13 appeared first on Opta Analyst.

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