The anticipation surrounding the initial College Football Playoff rankings of the season was primarily centered on which undefeated team would emerge at the top.

The answer? Ohio State, the reigning champions, claimed the number one spot in the first 2025 rankings released Tuesday night. Following closely behind were Indiana and Texas A&M.

Despite Texas A&M’s challenging schedule, which included a nail-biting 41-40 victory over tenth-ranked Notre Dame, the 12-member committee favored the Big Ten teams. The Buckeyes and Hoosiers have been dominant this season, with only two of their games combined being decided by less than ten points.

“When we evaluated A&M’s defense statistically, they ranked lower than Ohio State and Indiana,” explained committee chair Mack Rhoades. “We faced a tough decision and needed to identify distinguishing factors, and their defense was a key differentiator for us.”

“I think statistically when we looked at A&M defensively, they’re just lower than both Ohio State and Indiana,” committee chair Mack Rhoades said. “We had to make a hard decision, and you’re trying to find separators, and that was a separator for us.”

Another team with no losses, BYU of the Big 12, was ranked seventh.

Nos. 4, 5 and 6 went to Southeastern Conference teams with one loss each — Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. All of the top six came from either the Big Ten or SEC, a dose of business as usual despite a season that has been anything but predictable.

This marked the first of six weekly rankings the committee will release this season, ending Dec. 7 when the final list will set the bracket for the second 12-team playoff in major college football history.

That tournament begins Dec. 19-20 with four games on the campus of seeds No. 5-8. The top four seeds play winners of those games over the New Year holiday and the title game is set for Jan. 19 at Hard Rock Stadium outside Miami.

Texas Tech was ranked eighth and Oregon came in at No. 9. Rounding out the top 12 were Notre Dame — the only team in the Top 25 not from a power conference — then Texas and Oklahoma.

But if the bracket were set today, the Longhorns and Sooners would miss out,- bumped by No. 14 Virginia of the ACC and Memphis of the American. That’s thanks to a rule that places the five best-ranked conference champions into the bracket even if they’re not in the top 12.

Memphis wasn’t among the committee’s top 25 but was still the highest ranked leader in a Group of Five conference.

There is, of course, plenty of time for teams to make their cases, with four more weeks of the regular season, then a slate of conference title games set for the first weekend in December.

“If we go back to last year, Arizona State wasn’t even in the rankings for our first two rankings,” Rhoades said of the Sun Devils, who won the Big 12 and made the field. “Again, to everybody out there, this is the first ranking and still a lot of ball left to be played.”

The final tally in the top 12: The SEC has six teams, the Big Ten three, the Big 12 two, and the ACC none, with one independent.

Among those still holding out hope are teams such as 16th-ranked Vanderbilt and 17th-ranked Georgia Tech, each of whom spent time in the AP top 10 this season thanks to upsets that turned college football upside down in September and October.

The first-round matchups based on CFP rankings

— No. 12 Memphis at No. 5 Georgia, winner vs. No. 4 Alabama. You can almost hear SEC commissioner Greg Sankey breaking his TV wondering how an unranked team is in here over one of his.

— No. 11 Virginia at No. 6 Ole Miss, winner vs. No. 3 Texas A&M. Virginia’s only Top 25 meeting this season was against Florida State, which does not resemble a Top 25 team now.

— No. 10 Notre Dame at No. 7 BYU, winner vs. No. 2 Indiana. The Fighting Irish have to hope some of the teams immediately below them — like Texas and Oklahoma — do not put up impressive wins since they close with Navy, Pitt, Syracuse and Stanford.

— No. 9 Oregon at No. 8 Texas Tech, winner vs. No. 1 Ohio State. A Booster Bowl pitting teams backed by billionaires Phil Knight (Ducks) and Cody Campbell (Red Raiders).

Tweaks in this year’s bracket

The biggest change in the setup of this year’s bracket was eliminating the first-round bye for the four best conference champions. It would mean that Virginia, instead of jumping from a No. 14 ranking to a No. 3 seed, would be seeded 11th with a road game against Mississippi.

Rhoades also spent time discussing Oregon, which is ranked sixth in the AP poll but ninth in the playoff rankings. The Ducks’ best win this year was a 20-point victory over Northwestern, while its double-overtime win at Penn State early in the season has become less impressive as last year’s semifinalist fell apart.

“When we looked at and evaluated Oregon, we really looked at the quality of the team and how they looked on film,” Rhoades said.

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