Projecting the first College Football Playoff rankings: Is Notre Dame in or out? - NBC Sports
Ohio State, Indiana, Texas A&M and Alabama are sitting pretty. But the selection committee will have to make some tough choices as it fills out its first set of rankings.
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Projecting the first College Football Playoff rankings: Is Notre Dame in or out?
By
Nicole Auerbach,
By
Nicole Auerbach
Published November 3, 2025 06:31 PM
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The College Football Playoff selection committee will release its first set of in-season rankings on Tuesday night. It’ll be our first chance to see how this particular committee views the teams we’ve been debating and evaluating all season long. This Top 25 — and the 12-team bracket we get when we plug the rankings into the format — is genuinely useful to have.
The first set of rankings is often the hardest to project, because we don’t yet know how the selection committee feels about certain wins and losses. For example, we don’t yet know how the group considers Alabama’s Week 1 loss to Florida State or Notre Dame’s two early-season losses (and whether or not the Irish’s head-to-head loss to Miami will keep them below the ‘Canes, or if the teams have enough separation between the two to keep Notre Dame comfortably ahead).
I think we will surely see Ohio State, Indiana, Texas A&M and Alabama as the committee’s top four teams (in some order). As a reminder, the top four seeds do not need to be conference champions anymore. That rule changed this offseason, so don’t be startled to see multiple teams from the same conference in the top four.
04:00
Is Sayin the Heisman favorite after Week 10?
Nicole Auerbach and Joshua Perry discuss Julian Sayin’s near-perfect performance against Penn State and why the sophomore might be the leader in the Heisman Trophy race after Week 10.
I think the committee will keep Ohio State ahead of Indiana because of its consistent dominance and the nonconference win over Texas (that looks better now, thanks to the Longhorns’ four-game winning streak). Ranking Ohio State ahead of Indiana could help make a point about nonconference scheduling as well.
I also predict that the committee keeps an unbeaten Texas A&M (with
Rating: 5