Takeaways from Week 14 of College Football: Ohio State exorcises Michigan, Texas is back from the dead

Takeaways from Week 14 of College Football: Ohio State exorcises Michigan, Texas is back from the deadStory byNicole AuerbachSun, November 30, 2025 at 5:30 AM UTC·9 min read

College football is unpredictable and delightful, which is why we live for what happens on Saturdays. Rivalry weekend is always the best weekend of the year — and this year’s edition certainly delivered.

Each Sunday, I publish my biggest takeaways from the college football weekend. I highlight the most interesting storylines, track College Football Playoff contenders and specifically shout out individual and team performances that deserve the spotlight. This is the final edition for the 2025 season.

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1. Three-loss Texas is very much alive in the CFP race — and that’s going to put pressure on the selection committee.

The Longhorns were always going to be the only three-loss team with a legitimate chance to make the 12-team field as an at-large. They had the biggest opportunities down the stretch, and they took advantage of their final one to secure arguably the best win in the country (over No. 3 Texas A&M on Friday).

Now, Texas has two wins over teams ranked in the CFP selection committee’s top eight, a seven-point loss to the No.1 team in the country and a 25-point loss to the No. 4 team in the country. The third loss — to 4-8 Florida — is the bad one on the resume, but the pair of wins should more than offset one bad loss.

Steve Sarkisian is already lobbying for a CFP spot, arguing that Notre Dame got into the CFP (and all the way to the national championship game) with a loss to Northern Illinois. Of course, the Irish did that without losing any other games … which was different.

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One other aspect of Sark’s argument made more of an impact on me, though. He said that Texas shouldn’t be penalized unfairly for its loss to Ohio State, because no good team would ever schedule a nonconference game against another good team if it were.

I think that is an important point to make, and Sark isn’t wrong that a 10-2 Texas team would likely be in a projected 12-team bracket right now. But maybe just barely, like Alabama — with its own bad loss, to Florida State. This year’s committee is pretty obsessed with losses. So, the Florida one could still be enough to sink the Longhorns.

We’ll have a better idea of all of this come Tuesday night when we get the next set of rankings. Texas should move up a considerable amount from No. 16 (and certainly ahead of Vanderbilt due to the head-to-head win). It’s not unrealistic to think the Longhorns could slide all the way up to No. 11 (just behind Alabama) and be squarely on the bubble, rooting for chaos heading into conference championship weekend.

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Who deserves final at-large CFP bid?

Joshua Perry, Ahmed Fareed, Chris Simms and Nicole Auerbach debate the cases for Alabama, Miami and Texas to get the last spot for the College Football Playoff.

2. Ryan Day finally solved his Michigan problem.

The weeks after last year’s embarrassing loss to the Wolverines were undoubtedly the worst of Day’s coaching career. It was the fourth consecutive loss to Michigan — and easily the most inexplicable, with the Wolverines’ anemic passing attack accounting for just 62 yards … in a win. Day had seemed fixated on the idea of beating Michigan by running the ball between the tackles, even when it wasn’t working. He wanted to prove something about toughness and physicality, and it led to frustrating play calling and multiple losses.

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On Saturday, Ohio State played like Ohio State should. It relied on its suffocating red zone defense. Julian Sayin stretched the field vertically to the tune of 233 passing yards. The Buckeyes converted most of their third downs and two of three fourth downs to extend drives and exhaust the Michigan defense. They controlled the game at the line of scrimmage and put the game away with a 20-play drive that took up nearly 12 minutes and put the Buckeyes up three scores late.

I’ve long felt that Ohio State needed to snap the skid by blowing Michigan out, and it turns out that’s exactly what the doctor ordered. Now, the Buckeyes can go chase another national championship — with their gold pants in hand.

3. Miami looks like the best team in the ACC, but it’s still unlikely that the ‘Canes will make the Playoff.

I know, I know.  A lot of people believe the Hurricanes should be in the 12-team Playoff field, and this shouldn’t even be in doubt. Mario Cristobal thinks that Miami’s win over Notre Dame should trump all other criteria when comparing the two two-loss teams, which means that his squad should be comfortably in the field while the Fighting Irish worry on the bubble.

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But the selection committee clearly likes Notre Dame and believes it’s a complete, consistent team. Committee chair Hunter Yurachek said this week that the two schools were in the same grouping of teams (to be compared to one another) this week, and that Miami’s win over Notre Dame was “only one data point” — and clearly did not come into play as a tiebreaker. The Canes were still three spots behind the team they beat back in Week 1 in the most recent set of rankings.

But for two losses in a dreadful 14-day stretch, Miami’s CFP chances wouldn’t be in doubt. But the losses (to Louisville and SMU) came to teams that the ‘Canes really couldn’t lose to and still have a path to the ACC championship game. And in a weird season for the ACC, the league is looking like a one-bid conference (at best). It’s quite possible that its highest-ranked team (Miami) ends up on the wrong side of the bubble, and a team ranked lower than No. 12 sneaks into the field because the five highest-ranked FBS champions get automatic access to the CFP.

It sounds wrong, and it feels wrong. And, ultimately, that’s on Miami for losing to the two teams it did (with six Carson Beck interceptions). Or just blame the committee — plenty of people will do that!

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Can Indiana stand up to Ohio State’s talent?

Joshua Perry, Ahmed Fareed, Chris Simms and Nicole Auerbach look ahead to the Big Ten Championship Game between undefeated teams in No. 1 Ohio State and No. 2 Indiana.

4. Trust Texas A&M in the Playoff at your own peril.

The Aggies are a high-variance team. We saw both the floor and the ceiling in their game against South Carolina a few weeks ago, and we saw how damaging the lows can be without a frantic comeback when Texas A&M lost in Austin on Friday night.

Marcel Reed can make monster throws, but he can also throw interceptions in bunches. It’s going to be tough to trust this team against the nation’s best once we get to the postseason. The Aggies didn’t beat any SEC teams that finished in the top half of the conference this season. Part of that is the scheduling quirk of megaconferences — even teams within the same leagues have unbalanced schedules, and it’s certainly possible to avoid the top-tier teams in any given year — but it is worth noting.

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Yes, Texas has improved over the course of the season. But the Longhorn offense was dreadful in the first half of Friday’s game, and the Aggies still managed just a seven-point lead at the break. There were missed opportunities before all of the second-half three-and-outs and the two fourth-quarter Reed interceptions. It was surely a frustrating game for Texas A&M fans, and it’s going to be hard to forget between now and Selection Sunday. It’s a rough lasting impression.

5. Conferences need to rethink their tiebreaker procedures.

I spent most of my Saturday night tracking the twists and turns of SMU-Cal, which was not exactly what I envisioned I’d be doing when I woke up that morning. I figured I’d hyper fixate on the Iron Bowl — and maybe Virginia-Virginia Tech if it got weird.

Well, the Iron Bowl was a beautiful mess, so it kept second-screen status the whole time. But I had to devote a ton of attention to the game in Berkeley with the interim head coach. An SMU loss (coupled with a Virginia win and a North Carolina State victory over UNC) would result in 7-5 Duke reaching the ACC title game … which is not ideal for a Power 4 conference already coming to terms with the fact it may be a one-bid league.

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Tiebreakers are weird, and I’m not necessarily blaming the ACC for following its own tiebreaker rules to set up a Virginia-Duke title game. But it’s worth pointing out that a Duke win in Charlotte on Saturday would be absolutely brutal for the conference. Even with a win over a top-15 Virginia team, the Blue Devils would not be ranked by the CFP selection committee. That would open up the possibility of two Group of 5 champions being ranked higher than ACC champion Duke — and the ACC wouldn’t make the Playoff. That’s the nightmare scenario for the ACC. And it could be reality.

I do think there’s a larger issue that needs to be addressed. The current tiebreakers are not the best way to determine champions in an era of bloated megaconferences. You’re often comparing teams with totally different and imbalanced schedules, even within the same league. So, you go down the list of tiebreakers and look at records vs. common opponents, then maybe vs. opponents’ cumulative winning percentage.

Hell, the Mountain West used a combination of SP+, ESPN Strength of Record, KPI and SportSource Analytics to determine its two championship game participants this season. It’s different for different leagues, which is confusing to fans, and not all of the tiebreaking methods feel super fair to all participants.

Maybe more conferences will decide to use CFP ranking as a tiebreaker after head-to-head results. That’s simpler, and I think I’d rather a selection committee determine which team is better than another instead of some convoluted sixth-string tiebreaker. Or maybe we should literally flip a coin and televise it. I honestly think I’d prefer that!

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