Every year in college football, the AP’s preseason Top 25 rankings have their share of hits and misses. This year’s might as well be from a different universe.
On Aug. 11, the writers voted Texas No. 1, Penn State No. 2 and Clemson No. 3. They buried Indiana at No. 20, and Vanderbilt and Virginia were nowhere to be found.
A topsy-turvy year later, and the Longhorns, Nittany Lions and Tigers are bound for bowl purgatory. The Hoosiers and Cavaliers are knocking boldly on the College Football Playoff door, while the Commodores aren’t far off.
Here’s hoping your team made a compelling statement to that most mercurial of juries in Grapevine, Texas; if it didn’t do that, here’s hoping it goes bowling; if it isn’t doing that here’s hoping it’s thriving in the small-school playoffs; if it isn’t doing that here’s hoping next fall is a better one. Welcome to Week 15’s winners and losers.
FREE. SI College Football Newsletter. Get SI’s College Football Newsletter. dark
It has become fashionable to discuss Texas Tech’s 2025 breakthrough as preordained, the stuff of computer logic: if CASH INFLUX then CONFERENCE TITLE. However, as LSU and Penn State fans could tell you after this year, not all transfer-heavy superteams win. The Red Raiders, not merely filthy stinkin’ rich, seem to move with the synchronicity of a clock: Oil-and-gas baron Cody Campbell writes the checks, general manager James Blanchard finds the personnel, coach Joey McGuire leads the team, the team wins. The 1976 and 2008 seasons will have their backers, but after Texas Tech’s 34–7 beatdown of BYU Saturday it’s hard to argue we’re not watching the best team in program history.
The surest bet in college football for all of the 2010s and a good chunk of the 2020s is now an enigma. This season alone, coach Kalen DeBoer’s Crimson Tide have: lost to a Florida State team home for the holidays this year, beat Georgia in the Bulldogs’ building, reeled off four straight top-20 wins (including one over Vanderbilt), lost to a good Oklahoma team, barely beat coach-less Auburn, and rushed for -3 yards in the SEC championship. Alabama completely folded against Georgia, with quarterback Ty Simpson—once a Heisman candidate—completing 19 of 39 passes in a disoriented performance. The Crimson Tide did not look like anything resembling a CFP team, and where they fall in the Miami-Notre Dame matrix will be even more interesting than last year’s Alabama-SMU debate.
The Green Wave’s season started with somber remembrance—in their Aug. 30 win over Northwestern, Tulane wore blank helmets to demonstrate the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina on the program won’t be forgotten. It ended Friday with jubilation in the form of a 34–21 American championship victory over North Texas, keyed by a trio of interceptions from defensive back Jahiem Johnson, linebacker Chris Rodgers, and safety Jack Tchienchou. The Green Wave have been one of the Group of Five’s best teams for several years now, but this is a new level of notoriety for the team. It’s a testament to the persistence of their gradual rebuild, as impressive as any of the sport’s insta-turnarounds in recent years.
Trivia: When was the last year in which neither North Dakota State nor South Dakota State played for the FCS title? The answer is 2016, when James Madison beat Youngstown State, and the last year before that was Eastern Washington’s victory over Delaware in 2010. Alas, Saturday was a day of reckoning in the Dakotas. Shaking off a regular-season loss, Illinois State shocked the Bison 29–28 in the playoffs while Montana blasted the Jackrabbits 50–29. Still alive after shutting out Mercer 47–0: South Dakota, eyeing its first national title since a Division II crown in 1985. The Coyotes will visit the Grizzlies Saturday in a quarterfinal.
Only two conference championships in FBS this year had no bearing on the national title race—the MAC’s, won by Western Michigan, and Conference USA’s, won by the Owls Friday behind an ace performance from quarterback Amari Odom. If you’re tired of rags-to-riches stories in this column, look away: Kennesaw State has only been playing football for 11 years, and debuted in FBS in 2024. Even more remarkably, the Owls went 2–10 last season, losing 63–24 to the Jacksonville State team they beat yesterday and firing coach Brian Bohannon under bizarre circumstances. Maybe one of the 11 FBS teams to lose double-digit games this year—a list that includes Boston College, Oklahoma State, Purdue and others—will make a conference title run in 2026 or ’27.
It happened! On Aug. 31, 2025, “Golden” by HUNTR/X was America’s No. 1 song, Weapons was its No. 1 movie, and the Hurricanes topped the Fighting Irish in a highly entertaining Sunday night clash. What the CFP will do with Miami, Notre Dame, suddenly-shaky Alabama and even BYU this Sunday afternoon remains a bit of a mystery, but if nothing else, the Hurricanes should finish in front of the Fighting Irish. It is a matter of logical coherence, especially given their equal number of losses (two) and the four common opponents on the teams’ schedules. For this—the clear delineation between winning and losing—is what College Football Winners and Losers is all about.
More College Football on Sports Illustrated
Listen to SI’s new college sports podcast, Others Receiving Votes, below or on Apple and Spotify. Watch the show on SI’s YouTube channel.
