The Path to the 12-team College Football Playoff Championship Week: Oregon is the Big Ten Bully

Conference Championship week has come and gone and it has led us to the end of The Path to the 12-team College Football Playoff. Within hours the committee will reveal the 12 teams that will play for the national championship, though this weekend’s games have already decided five of them. The rankings will be revealed at Noon ET. There’s so much to unpack and so little time, the season is over, but the fun has just begun, so let’s dive right into this week’s biggest wins. 

The Statements

The biggest wins of Conference Championship Week to grab an automatic qualifier in the 12-team CFP

1. A new Big Ten Bully

Penn State defensive end Abdul Carter wrote “Big Ten Bully” on his eye black for the Big Ten Championship Game against No. 1 Oregon. But with a 45-37 win in Indianapolis, Dan Lanning and the Ducks are the official bully in their new conference. In Year 1 in the the conference, Oregon didn’t just go 13-0, the Ducks ran through Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State, the league's perennial powerhouses, to do it. They’ll be the No. 1 seed when the CFP rankings are revealed on Sunday and are the deserving favorite heading into the first-ever 12-team playoff. 

Dillon Gabriel was the perfect Bo Nix replacement, a poised veteran with a lightning-quick release and microchip for a brain that processes even faster. He has the fourth-highest completion percentage of any quarterback in the country (at least 100 dropbacks), and is 17th in yards per attempt despite the ninth-lowest average depth of target. Over 2,000 of Oregon’s 3,614 total passing yards have come after the catch, and that was the formula against No. 3 Penn State. 

Gabriel was hyper-efficient, completing 22/32 passes for 281 yards and four touchdowns. He averaged 2.51 seconds to throw with an ADOT of 5.5 and produced 166 yards after the catch. Penn State blitzed often and Carter pressured him six times, but only got home, and on his pressured dropbacks, he averaged 15.9 yards per attempt. When he’s getting the ball out quick and still creating big plays, the Oregon offense is nearly blitz-proof and becomes even tougher to stop, and 2.51 seconds was his quickest time to throw since Week 2. 

Gabriel can play both ways at a high level, but as an undersized QB with questionable arm strength, the longer a play develops, the greater the risk of a costly mistake. Point guard Gabriel is my favorite Gabriel for this loaded Oregon offense, and he got back to that style in Indy.

2. UGA has luck on his side

Texas’s mascot, Bevo, couldn’t make the trip to Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the SEC Championship Game, and there wasn’t a living being more excited about that than UGA, after their run-in at the 2019 Sugar Bowl. It’s not clear who is responsible, but in Georgia’s 22-19 overtime win, the Bulldogs had luck on their side, and a live mascot certainly can’t hurt the mojo on the sidelines. 

Now, this is not to say that Georgia is lucky or got lucky by beating Texas. Kirby Smart made excellent defensive adjustments to help his cornerbacks after Daniel Harris got burned in the first quarter, Mykel Williams and Jalon Walker lived in the backfield with five QB pressures and a sack each, and Gunner Stockton gave the offense life after he replaced the injured Carson Beck. However, it is to say that luck is a very real factor in a football game and to ignore its impact would be foolish. Even with Georgia taking the season series 2-0, these are two evenly matched and equally flawed teams with excellent defenses. They could meet again in the CFP, and the outcome will likely be a coin flip that time too. 

Texas missed two field goals in this game, that’s not luck. Texas had a well-thrown ball intercepted after it was tipped by the receiver, that’s not luck (in this case it was an inexcusably poor effort by Isaiah Bond). Georgia, on its 16-play 72-yard fourth-quarter field goal drive to take a 16-13 lead, converted a fake punt with a pitch from backup center Drew Bobo, and even that isn’t luck. But on that same drive, Georgia fumbled twice and recovered it both times. You can’t tell me that’s not good fortune. If the oblong ball that we worship every weekend had bounced a different direction either time, maybe Texas would be the No. 2 seed with a first-round bye. 

Georgia is likely the better team but by the slimmest of margins. These are the two best defenses in college football, both capable of carrying offensive units with huge question marks at quarterback to a national championship. They just might need some good luck to get there. 

3. Dabo does it again

Dabo Swinney just won’t go away. No matter how tired the college football world is of Clemson, Dabo’s Tigers just find a way. On Saturday night in Charlotte, they found a way to let a 24-7 halftime lead over No. 8 SMU melt away before true freshman kicker Nolan Hauser nailed a 56-yard game-winning field goal as time expired. 

Despite suffering three losses, including a disgusting 34-3 defeat at the hands of Georgia in Week 1, the Tigers will jump from No. 17 to the No. 12 seed in the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff. And if the committee gives an at-large bid to the Mustangs, Clemson will fittingly keep Alabama, the team that in many ways defined the four-team era alongside the Tigers, out. 

Rhett Lashlee’s team came into the ACC title game at 11-1 but against the 60th toughest schedule in the country. Clemson was the first end-of-season CFP contender the Mustangs faced since its 18-15 loss to BYU in Week 2, and they looked shell-shocked. The game started with a Kevin Jenning’s fumble, a Clemson touchdown two plays later, an SMU three-and-out, and a four-play 28-yard touchdown drive. Less than five minutes into the game, Clemson led 14-0. 

Since making the quarterback switch from Preston Stone to Kevin Jennings, SMU has been electric, producing a 99th-percentile explosive pass rate. However, one of the biggest reasons for the QB change was because Jennings’ athleticism helped curtail Lashlee’s concerns about his struggling offensive line. That pressure got home early, to the tune of two sacks, a forced fumble, and two tackles for loss in the first half, but it dried up, as did Clemson’s offensive onslaught. Yet, it proved to be just enough. 

That’s the story of this Clemson season, it was just enough. The Tigers will likely be the only three-loss team in the CFP because Swinney did just enough. But in the CFP, the story won’t last long. 

4. Maddux Madsen and Boise takes the Big 12’s Bye

The only shame of the Boise State Broncos winning the Mountain West title and securing a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff is that we don’t get an official CFP home game on the Smurf turf, but we essentially had one on Friday night. With No. 10 Boise State and No. 20 UNLV, the two highest-ranked Group of Five teams, the conference championship game was essentially a win-and-in scenario. So with a 21-7 win, the Broncos are – well – in. 

The story of Boise State’s run to 12-1 and the top-four seed that will come with it, has been the story of Ashton Jeanty’s dominance, and after a 32-carry, 209-yard one-touchdown performance on Friday, he’s up to 2,497 yards and 29 rushing scores. So far, the Heisman Trophy contender has produced the fourth-best rushing season of all-time (Kevin Smith, Melvin Gordon, and Barry Sanders), but this team is more than just its future first-round NFL draft pick in the backfield. 

Jeanty had a remarkable 75-yard touchdown run to essentially put the game on ice before halftime, but the first two scores of the night came courtesy of Maddux Madsen, maybe the most overlooked quarterback in the country. 

Madsen has the benefit of play-action on 36.7% of his dropbacks, which is doubly effective when the play-fake is for Jeanty. Still, he’s been highly efficient as a passer and a scrambler. Heads turned when he beat out five-star transfer Malachi Nelson as Taylen Green’s replacement after last year’s starter transferred to Arkansas and now his play, in tandem with Jeanty’s, will give the Broncos a chance in their quarterfinal matchup. Even in the Mountain West, you don’t win a conference title being one-dimensional and Spencer Danielson’s team has a surprisingly strong counter–punch. 

5. Kenny Dillingham’s quick turnaround is complete

Much like in the NFL, this has been a season of running back resurgence in college football. Ashton Jeanty is contending for the Heisman Trophy, but Arizona State’s Cam Skattebo was striking the Heisman pose on Saturday afternoon in the Sun Devil’s 45-19 win over Iowa State. The senior running back, who began his career as a zero-star recruit at FCS Sacramento State, carried the Sun Devils into the CFP just one year after finishing 3-9. 

Entering his second season leading his alma mater, 34-year-old head coach Kenny Dillingham’s team was picked to finish last in the Big 12 with a win total set at 4.5. That over cashed on October 11, and now with Clemson’s upset win over SMU, the Sun Devils are 11-2 and likely heading into the CFP with a first-round bye. 

There are plenty of reasons that Dillingham’s team took such a massive leap forward. He’s an innovative offensive mind who used the transfer portal to revamp a roster that Herm Edwards left in ruins, he’s developed redshirt freshman quarterback Sam Leavitt (also a transfer) into an effective and efficient downfield passer, and his program moved to a Texas and Oklahoma-less Big 12, but most importantly, he found Cam Skattebo. 

With defenses getting lighter and lighter, and nickel and dime personnel becoming base for most defenses, big physical runners are back in style. Skattebo isn’t just a top 10 rusher in the country, he’s also seventh in total yards after contact. Iowa State’s 3-3-5 defense simply didn’t have enough mass to bring down the 215-pound back consistently, so 115 of his 170 rushing yards came after first contact. 

Skattebo’s 16 carries, not only averaged over 10 yards a pop but generated a 69% success rate. At 49.3%, Skattebo has the third-highest success rate in the country this season among players with at least 200 carries (Bryson Daily, Army and Jordan James, Oregon), and he’s one of just six players with at least 70 missed tackles forced and over 3.50 yards after contact per carry. When it's not blocked well, Skattebo can make something happen, and when it is, he'll punish undersized second-level defenders. If not Clemson, Arizona State is likely the weakest team in this CFP field, but no defense is going to be excited about spending a full 60 minutes trying to tackle Skattebo. 

As for Arizona State, claiming a first-round bye; you could argue that the Sun Devils entering the CFP as a top-four seed isn’t reflective of the college football season that was. They were hardly one of the four best teams and still don’t appear to be a legitimate contender. However, it’d say that’s exactly what we got all year... chaos.

The seeding formula will change soon when this thing inevitably balloons to 14 or 16 teams, but for now, I think this format is perfectly chaotic. It’s borderline nonsensical for Boise State and Arizona State to be top-four seeds, but then, so is college football, and if those teams truly aren’t deserving, then they’ll lose. Winning your conference should come with a significant reward, otherwise the sport hands more power over to a committee that it perennially despises. The more the games matter, the better.

The death penalty

With a loss this week, these teams are no longer CFP contenders.

6. A tip of the overly curved brim hat to you, Matt Campbell

At this point, nine years in, Matt Campbell’s success at Iowa State is nothing new. So, it’s easy to forget how impressive it is. At 10-3, Campbell just completed the first 10-win season in program history and will reach a bowl for the seventh time in nine seasons. Prior to Campbell’s arrival, Iowa State had played in just 12 bowl games in 119 seasons. Everything went wrong for the Cyclones on Saturday, but if it hadn’t, it would have been the first conference championship since Iowa State won the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1911 and 1912. 

Campbell missed out on the CFP this year, but simply raising the bar to that level in Ames is remarkable. He doesn’t look interested in another job, and there won’t be many upgrades available this offseason, but at some point, I’d love to see him make the jump to a program with the resources to not just compete for a spot at the CFP, but to win the whole thing.  

7. Red Zone Roulette burns Rebels

Brennan Marion’s “Go-Go offense” at UNLV is designed to stress the entire field vertically and horizontally with unique formations and backfield deception. However, when the field condenses, window dressing only goes so far. Eventually, football always comes down to physicality, and Boise State had a clear edge in that department.

For the season, Marion’s offense, which is top-35 in the country in EPA/play, yards/play, and success rate, is 117th in red zone touchdown percentage. The Rebels have only converted 50% of their trips inside the opponent's 20-yard line into six points and only 80% of their red zone trips have been fruitful.

This was the third meeting between these two teams in the past 12 months and the second this season. Familiarity didn’t make Ashton Jeanty any easier to tackle, but it did provide an excellent game plan to slow down the go-go. On Friday night the Boise State defense was effective with its pressure looks against UNLV quarterback Hajj-Malik Williams, who never found a rhythm. But once the Broncos built a lead, the plan was to keep the passing game in front of them, let the Rebels win on the ground, which they did to the tune of 0.62 EPA/rush and 6.2 yards/rush, and spin the red zone roulette wheel.

UNLV’s first trip to the red zone came on its second drive of the third quarter after an 86-yard run by Kylin James, already down 21-0. That explosive play was followed by a delay of game penalty, a one-yard run, a one-yard loss on a sack, and back-to-back incomplete passes. 

The Rebel’s only score came on a 31-yard touchdown run two drives later. Then after forcing a three-and-out, with a chance to finally make a game of it down 21-7 a 15-play drive stalled in the red zone again. Here was the sequence from first-and-goal from the eight-yard line with 3:26 remaining: 

• False start (-5 yards)
• Greg Burrell run (-4 yards)
• Hajj-Malik Williams sack (-4 yards)
• Incomplete pass
• Incomplete pass
• Ballgame.

Hoping to host

With a conference championship game loss, these teams played themselves into the first round of the CFP, but at least they’re likely in for some home cooking in two weeks.

8. Kirby’s hand was forced, and now Sark’s is too

Carson Beck and Quinn Ewers both returned to college football as presumptive first-round picks in the 2025 NFL Draft and potential contenders for the No. 1 spot. Well, neither has lived up to expectations in the 2024 season, Beck is prone to turnovers, Ewers is prone to injury, and both struggled against elite defenses on Saturday afternoon in Atlanta with the SEC Championship on the line. Beck was in on the final play of overtime as Trevor Etienne ran in the game-winning touchdown, but backup Gunner Stockton led the Dawgs there. 

Kirby Smart didn’t have a choice, Beck injured his right arm on the final play of the first half, giving way to Stockton after the break. Ewers, despite playing with a bionic ankle, was just effective enough in the first half to keep Arch Manning on the sidelines. Stockton, even with a late interception that helped Texas force OT, gave Georgia the spark its offense needed to knock off the Longhorns for the second time this year, a spark that Manning may have provided if given the chance. 

Quinn Ewers looked great at the start of the year. His performance against Michigan may have been the best game of his career, but he’s hurt and has been most of the season. Even when he’s been healthy, he’s likely not the best quarterback on Sark’s roster. 

Ewers finished the game with 358 yards on 27/46 passing with a touchdown and two interceptions. The first was hardly his fault, but he played like he was dying to give the ball away in the second half even before No. 2. The junior averaged 6.37 yards and 0.21 EPA/dropback, but his EPA/play with his seven explosive plays, many of which were schemed open by Sark’s play-calling, removed was -0.37. Even when those plays hit, it feels as though Ewers is just throwing a fly ball out there and hoping his receiver can run it down. Maybe that's why he looked so good with 4.21 40-yard dash Xavier Worthy on his team last year.

With this season's Ewers at quarterback, Texas is forced into a boom-or-bust play style. If he misses the schemed-open deep shot or a few screens don’t go for 15+, then the Longhorns can’t reliably move the ball against the quality of defense they’ll see in the CFP. There’s no guarantee that changes with Manning, but his athleticism can provide an additional element to the run game, and at this point with two weeks to prepare for the first round, Sark must make the decision that Kirby had no choice but to. 

9. Big Game James does it again

James Franklin has done it again. He’s lost to another top-five team. The 11th-year head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions is now 1-14 in his career against top-5 ranked opponents after his 45-37 loss to the No. 1 ranked Oregon Ducks. It’s a narrative that he can’t escape, both because his teams are consistently good enough to demand the expectation of competing with the best teams in the country, and because they’re never good enough to get over the hump. However, this time Franklin didn’t have some memorable coaching gaffe on the big stage, a fourth-and-5 handoff against Ohio State in 2018. No, this time he made his mistakes months ago. 

This offseason Penn State had two priorities. First, it had to replace its coordinators with the firing of OC Mike Yurich and the departure of DC Manny Diaz. Franklin hired Andy Kotelnicki on offense (fantastic) and Tom Allen on defense (his first mistake). The other was the replenish a wide receiver room that struggled in 2023 and saw its best player, KeAndre Lambert-Smith, flee for Auburn in the transfer portal. Franklin added Ohio State receiver Julian Fleming in the portal but otherwise stood pat (mistake No. 2). 

On Saturday night in Indy, Allen’s defense allowed 466 yards and had no answer for slot receiver Tez Johnson, who finished with 11 catches for 181 yards and a touchdown, or any Oregon pass catcher over the middle of the field. By EPA/play, it was the worst performance by a Penn State defense since a 55-16 loss to Michigan State in 2015, Franklin’s second year on the job. Allen blitzed Gabriel, who completes nearly 70% of his throws and averages 8.8 yards per attempt with 15 touchdowns to two interceptions against the blitz this season, on 17 of his 35 dropbacks. Needless to say, the sixth-year QB torched him for three touchdowns and 139 yards. 

As for the receiver play, Harrison Wallace III and Omari Evans both ended the game with touchdowns, but they were the only two Penn State wide receivers to catch a pass, and even in a game with 518 total yards of offense, they combined for 102 yards on eight grabs. Despite his two interceptions, Drew Allar was excellent and may have played himself into the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft, not just the first round of the CFP, but this team doesn’t have enough talent on the outside to maximize his full potential. 

Now, it’s a matter of how far Penn State falls on Sunday. The Nittany Lions will likely be the five or six seed, with their only losses to Ohio State and Oregon. However, this committee has leaned heavily on head-to-head results, as shown by the ordering of Alabama, Ole Miss, and South Carolina last week, so the door is open for Penn State to slide all the way behind the Buckeyes. 

Just hoping

An at-large bid was never guaranteed for the Conference Championship losers

10. SMU vs. Alabama

Had SMU laid down in the second half, this wouldn’t be a conversation, but a close loss is valuable and a last-second 56-yard field goal is as close as it gets. Kevin Jennings led a ferocious comeback after a disastrous start, and that will leave a positive final impression on the committee. In last week’s rankings, Alabama was the last team in, and with Clemson taking the 12-seed and no reason to re-order the idle teams, that leaves one bid for the Mustangs or the Crimson Tide. 

The committee is unlikely to punish teams that were previously in the field for losing in the conference championship game. That will disincentivize those teams from playing an extra game, which could lead those programs to argue against having one in the first place, and the conferences enjoy having that end-of-season cash cow. However, if it were up to me, Alabama would be in. 

Kalen DeBoer’s Tide have three losses and SMU has only two, with an extra win, but let’s be serious about the level of competition these teams have faced and look to the quality of wins on their resumes over the number of losses. The committee rankings aren’t standings. 

SMU’s best two wins are against BYU, currently ranked No. 18 in the country, and Louisville, which finished the year unranked at 8-4. Alabama, despite its ugly losses to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma, has beaten Georgia, the SEC Champs, South Carolina, which is on the at-large bubble, and its third-best win is over Missouri, which is ranked No. 19, one spot behind BYU. SMU has been a good story but I'll take Bama. 

And the Conference Championship Week Heisman goes to…

11. Boise State running back, Ashton Jeanty

Ashton Jeanty was fantastic in Boise State’s conference title game win over UNLV, and he deserves one last Heisman Trophy of the Week because the real Heisman Trophy (of the season), is and should be going to Travis Hunter. 

Jeanty’s numbers are remarkable, and with them, He’s threatening Barry Sanders’ all-time rushing record, but when you dig into it, that comparison feels unfair. The record Jeanty is chasing of 2,628 yards, came in just 11 games, compared to Jeanty’s 2,497 13 already under his belt. In Game 14, Jeanty will likely surpass that number, but the real record should be set at 2,850 because bowl game stats didn’t count toward single-season totals for much of college football history. 

Hunter, on the other hand, needs no qualifiers. As a full-time two-way player, he accomplished something no modern college football player ever has, or likely ever will again, and he was astoundingly productive considering the workload. Hunter is sixth in the country in receiving yards and fifth in catches with 1,152 yards on 92 grabs, with 31 tackles, 11 pass breakups, four interceptions, and a forced fumble. I mean come on, why is this even a discussion? 

UCF 2017 National Championship Memorial Group of Five Team of the Week

12. The Army Black Knights

Boise State has earned its way out of the G5 Team of the Week. The Broncos are for real and even without an automatic qualifier, they’re one of the 12 best teams in the country, so this is the perfect opportunity to recognize a team that won’t make the playoff, but in plenty of years would be good enough to. 

For the first time in 131 seasons of Army football, the Black Knights have won a conference championship. Aside from a seven-year stint in Conference USA from 1998-2004, Army has been an FBS independent, but in 2024 the program, along with Navy, joined the AAC, and Jeff Monken’s team dominated it. After dismantling Tulane 35-14, the Black Knights will head into the Army-Navy game next weekend already with a conference title at 11-1. 

There isn’t room for Army in the CFP and with a blowout loss to Notre Dame on their resume, that’s fine, but they might need to make room for Byson Daily in New York for the Heisman Trophy ceremony. With four rushing touchdowns on Friday night, Daily set the AAC record with 29, tying Jeanty for the most in the country. Despite missing a game with an injury, he’s the eighth-leading rusher with 1,480 yards and has thrown for eight touchdowns while averaging 11.2 yards per attempt. Navy quarterback Keenan Reynolds in 2015 is the last service academy player to get the Heisman finalist invite and Daily’s season has been more impressive, with five more total TDs.