BYU Sits at No. 10 in Latest CFP Rankings, on Track for First-Round Road Game
The CFP selection committee's second top-25 poll puts the 7-2 Cougars in the playoff field — but one more loss could change everything before the Dec. 6 bracket is finalized.
Source: ncaa.com
BYU is in the College Football Playoff field — for now. The CFP selection committee's second top-25 rankings of the season, released Tuesday night on ESPN, slot the 7-2 Cougars at No. 10, putting them inside the 12-team bracket and on a projected first-round road trip to No. 7 Miami.
If the playoff started today, BYU would travel to face the Hurricanes in the first round. The winner of that game would then face No. 2 Utah — BYU's in-state rival and the team that just beat the Cougars — in the quarterfinals, according to the projected bracket published by SB Nation.
Utah, at 9-0, sits at No. 2 overall. The only team ranked ahead of the Utes is Georgia, which holds the No. 1 spot.
Georgia jumped to the top spot after beating Ole Miss convincingly, while Miami — which had been No. 1 in the first rankings — fell to No. 7 following its loss to Notre Dame, according to ESPN. Notre Dame climbed to No. 5 after that win, a rise that also benefits BYU: the Fighting Irish are one of the Cougars' marquee wins this season, and their improved ranking strengthens BYU's résumé, according to Deseret News.
The Big 12 is well-represented in the current field. Beyond Utah at No. 2 and BYU at No. 10, the conference also has No. 12 Texas Tech, No. 14 Houston, No. 23 Arizona, and No. 25 Oklahoma State in the rankings, according to Deseret News.
This is not the final bracket. The committee releases updated rankings each Tuesday, and three more in-season polls remain before the official 12-team bracket is announced on Sunday, Dec. 6, according to NCAA.com. A lot can change — Indiana is a cautionary example: the defending champions dropped five spots to No. 9 this week despite not playing, after six of their previous opponents lost and UCLA beat Minnesota by 14 points, a team Indiana had barely beaten in overtime, according to SI.com. Committee chair Hunter Yurachek cited those results as factors in Indiana's fall.
Six of the teams the Hoosiers beat lost this week, so the program's résumé definitely took a hit.— Hunter Yurachek, CFP Committee Chair
The bracket structure gives the top four teams — currently Georgia, Utah, Alabama, and UCLA — automatic first-round byes into the quarterfinals. Seeds 5 through 12 play first-round games at the higher seed's campus. Conference champions from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC each receive automatic bids, and the highest-ranked team from the American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12, and Sun Belt also earns an automatic bid regardless of whether they won their conference, according to NCAA.com. Notre Dame receives an automatic bid if ranked in the top 12.
For BYU, the path forward is straightforward but narrow: stay in the top 12 through three more weeks of results — their own and everyone else's — and a playoff berth is secured. Fall out, and Dec. 6 becomes a much harder watch.
Why it matters — BYU's playoff spot is real but fragile — three weeks of results across the country will determine whether the Cougars are playing in December or watching from home.
⚠ Not yet confirmed
- Indiana coach Curt Cignetti may have struck a nerve with committee members, contributing to the Hoosiers' drop
Sources differ on Oklahoma State's record: 6-3 (sbnation.com) vs 7-2 (deseret.com)
Reported by ncaa.com, espn.co.uk, sbnation.com, on3.com, si.com, deseret.com
