Teams That Won't Make The College Football Playoff, Week 12 Edition
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There are three weeks of regular season college football left, which means it’s time to be a little more stringent in my eliminations.
My goal is to have a list of 12 teams which match the final 12 teams the College Football Playoff committee will announce on December 7th. Here’s how I plan to do it.
Week 12 (this week): no more than 20 teams
Week 13 (SEC Jobber Week): no more than 18 teams
Week 14 (Rivalry Week): no more than 15 teams
Week 15 (Conference Championship Week): 12 teams
If you want to know how my process works, check it out here.
So far, we have crossed off (starting from Week 4): Boise State, Florida, Kansas State, Clemson, Auburn, South Carolina, Penn State, Vanderbilt, Florida State, Illinois, Memphis, Nebraska, LSU, Arizona State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Houston, Iowa State and Tennessee.
(Note: In my betting recap column from Monday, I wrote Memphis would have a good chance to appear in this column, completely forgetting that I got the Tigers out of the paint weeks ago. College Football News regrets the error.)
Here is this week’s list (new teams added to the list last week are in bold):
1. Ohio State
2. Indiana
3. Texas A&M
4. Alabama
5. Georgia
6. Oregon
7. Ole Miss
8. BYU
9. Texas Tech
10. Notre Dame
11. Oklahoma
12. Virginia
13. Texas
14. Louisville
16. Georgia Tech
17. Utah
18. Miami
20. USC
21. Michigan
24. Washington
25. Cincinnati
This week’s selections: Louisville and Washington.
Why Louisville?
I started to read the tiebreaker process for the ACC championship game to justify this selection, but my head began to hurt.
I’ll offer this instead: the Cardinals sit at 7-2 (5-2 in ACC play) behind five one-loss teams. They lose the head-to-head tiebreaker to one of those teams (Virginia), and they only have one of those teams left on the schedule (SMU). Getting to the ACC title game would require a level of carnage that doesn’t seem realistic.
Louisville… your watch has ended.
Why Washington?
At 6-2 the Huskies’ slim CFP hopes relied on winning out (at Wisconsin, Purdue, at UCLA, Oregon) and teams ahead of them in the rankings being upset (as reaching the Big Ten title game was very unlikely to happen at this point).
Maybe, just maybe, the Huskies could have climbed all the way to a top 10 ranking (on the strength of the Big Ten’s reputation) and held on to an at-large spot for dear life during conference championship weekend.
Then Washington decided to score 13 points in a loss to the Badgers, and that was that.
Washington… your watch has ended.
Check back next week when I cross off at least one team from this list. Going forward, I will no longer use the current AP Top 25 (with the already eliminated teams removed).
I will use the teams listed above, in the order of the CFP rankings from the previous Tuesday, while only adding new teams (in bold) that are added to the CFP Top 25. Teams I have already eliminated will appear in strikethrough.
1. Ohio State
2. Indiana
3. Texas A&M
4. Alabama
5. Georgia
6. Ole Miss
7. BYU
8. Texas Tech
9. Oregon
10. Notre Dame
11. Texas
12. Oklahoma
13. Utah
14. Virginia15. Louisville
16. Vanderbilt
17. Georgia Tech
18. Miami
19. USC
20. Iowa
21. Michigan22. Missouri
23. Washington
24. Pittsburgh25. TennesseeNR. Cincinnati
This story was originally reported by College Football News on Nov 12, 2025, where it first appeared in the College Football section. Add College Football News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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