As teams continue to jockey for position within the league, it’s becoming clearer as to how many SEC teams will be able to quality for the 2025 College Football Playoff.
Vanderbilt’s gutsy 17-10 win over Missouri vaulted the Commodores squarely into the CFP picture, and Diego Pavia & Co. join Alabama, Georgia, Texas A&M and Ole Miss as being in strong position to reach the postseason bracket.
Following Week 9’s action, ESPN’s Heather Dinich took a stab at updating her latest projections for the CFP, and she has all five of those SEC programs included in her field.
The Crimson Tide are the highest-ranked SEC squad at No. 3 following their comeback win over South Carolina, with the Aggies, Bulldogs and Rebels following right behind in that order. The former and latter each picked up ranked wins in league play on Saturday, while Georgia was idle ahead of its date with Florida next week.
But the headliner from Saturday was Vanderbilt, and Clark Lea’s team slid in at No. 9 in Dinich’s latest rankings:
“The committee would have a difficult decision, putting the one-loss Commodores ahead of two undefeated teams, but could justify it because Vanderbilt’s two best wins are better than BYU’s wins against Utah and Iowa State — and better than any of Georgia Tech’s wins. The lone loss was to Alabama, which should be the committee’s top one-loss team. The Commodores have now won back-to-back games against ranked SEC opponents. They also earned a convincing 31-7 win at South Carolina, which just pushed Alabama to the brink. Vanderbilt would be compared with one-loss Texas Tech, and the Commodores have better wins than the Red Raiders, and a better loss, as Texas Tech lost to Arizona State.“
Of course, the ‘Dores next visit Texas for a de facto CFP-elimination game on Saturday.
Here is Dinich’s latest CFP top 12:
- Ohio State
- Indiana
- Alabama
- Texas A&M
- Georgia
- Ole Miss
- Miami
- Oregon
- Vanderbilt
- BYU
- Georgia Tech
- Notre Dame (Memphis projected No. 12 seed as American champion)
Parker is currently the sports editor with the Enterprise-Journal in McComb, Mississippi. He's a graduate from Mizzou who has experience covering the Tiger football and basketball beats for SB Nation, and he's worked for a variety of sports news outlets in the past.
