The college football season is heating up and Sunday's newly released AP Top 25 rankings suggest the voters see the national championship race in a whole new light.
The second year of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff introduces straight seeding instead of last year's format where the top four conference champions received first-round byes. That change is going to make a big impact on the final bracket, especially if there is more than one team from the same conference in the top four.
Projecting the 2026 CFP bracket based on the Week 5 AP rankings
There were some major shifts in this week's AP rankings. That severely alters where teams could be playing their first games of the postseason if the season were to end today.
Top 4 byes
After dismantling the struggling Florida Gators, Miami earned a two-spot bump from last week. The Hurricanes now sit behind the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes and look to be the newest real challenger to the title race.
- Ohio State
- Miami
- Penn State
- LSU
With this top four, the Buckeyes would return to the Rose Bowl with the Hurricanes likely selecting home field advantage at the Orange Bowl. Penn State doesn't have a lot of historic connections to either the Peach Bowl or the Cotton Bowl but the Nittany Lions may choose the destination requiring the least amount of travel which would be Atlanta. That leaves the Tigers with going to Dallas, which also isn't too far from Baton Rouge.
At-large bids
Now for the wonky bit. Because of the straight seeding, the Big 12 Conference's champion would be the penultimate team into the field. Texas Tech is ranked No. 12 so the Red Raiders would sit as the 11-seed in the bracket. After that, you'd need to include the highest ranked Group of Five conference champion which, funny enough, isn't even ranked. South Florida remains outside the Top 25 is but receiving enough votes to sit No. 28 unofficially. The Bulls would be the 12-seed.
Seeds 5-10 would get the straight-seeding treatment so that makes things a lot easier. The list would be as follows: (5) Georgia, (6) Oregon, (7) Oklahoma, (8) Florida State, (9) Texas A&M and (10) Texas. Sadly, the Indiana Hoosiers - who jumped up eight spots to No. 11 in the poll after crushing Illinois - would miss out on the CFP altogether because of Texas Tech and South Florida's positioning.
Here's how the first-round campus matchups would look based on the current model:
- 12 South Florida at 5 Georgia
11 Texas Tech at 6 Oregon
10 Texas at 7 Oklahoma
9 Texas A&M at 8 Florida State
With the changes in the Top 12, the Big Ten would only get three representatives in the bracket (sorry, Hoosiers). The SEC would still see a whopping five of its members have a shot at the national championship while the ACC would get two and one each for the Big 12 and Group of Five.