ESPN expert identifies worst team to ever make the College Football Playoff
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Including the 2025 field, there are now 64 teams that have qualified for the College Football Playoff. ESPN’s Bill Connelly ranked them from No. 1 to No. 64 on Monday.
Unsurprisingly, only 1 Group of 5 team (2021 Cincinnati, No. 46) earned a top-50 ranking. His worst team is also a Group of 5 school, but probably not the one you think.
Counting down his list from worst to best, Connelly pegged the 2025 Tulane Green Wave — this year’s No. 11 seed — as the worst CFP team in the sport’s history. Their No. 64 ranking is 4 lower than James Madison, who earned the No. 12 seed this year. Here’s Connelly’s reasoning:
Jon Sumrall’s final Tulane team is adaptable and resilient and certainly clears a physicality bar that not every awesome Group of 5 team might. But the Green Wave’s two losses — 45-10 against first-round opponent Ole Miss, 48-26 at UTSA — were a sign that when things go awry, the ceiling is much, much lower than what we might expect from a playoff team.
Tulane is obviously not a bad team, but the Green Wave are definitely lacking when compared to the likes of 2019 LSU, 2020 Alabama and others. Regardless, Ole Miss probably wishes the Green Wave didn’t have this news to motivate them ahead of their Saturday afternoon battle (3:30 p.m. E.T., TNT).
