By Staff Writers, Leo Hudak and Luke Velardi
The 2024-25 College Football season has the potential to be one of the most memorable ever. We are coming up on midseason and a highly anticipated season has already exceeded its expectations. There have been many huge, unexpected upsets with three top-5 teams going down to unranked teams already. #5 Notre Dame lost to Northern Illinois in Week 2, then #4 Tennessee fell to Arkansas and #1 Alabama lost to Vanderbilt both in Week 5. There have also been many other top-25 upsets this year and the hype around this season is huge, and we haven’t even arrived at the highly-anticipated 12 team playoff format that expanded from four teams in the offseason. Therefore, this season is shaping up to be one of the greatest and most historic ever.
In college sports, it is very different for those bottom-tier division-one schools to get into what is known as the top 25. Unlike the National Football League, where there are power rankings to determine where each team is after each week, no one really talks about who the clear number one team is in the league. While in college football, there certainly is a lot of talk of who the top teams are in the county as it is very evident with the AP poll (a system that determines where each team is ranked after each week). That being said, there has definitely been a lot of controversy of which teams are actually living up to those expectations. A big example is the University of Alabama, who has dropped significantly below their own expectations by dipping numerous spots to number 15. This is the first time that this has happened since 2010. Another team that did not come close to living up to their expectations is Michigan. After Jim Harbarugh left the University of Michigan, it has been downfall since. They have been knocked out of the top 25, which is tremendously shocking after they won the national championship last year. Therefore, it is clear that these teams have to live up to the expectations that they have and if they struggle. These low end divison-one football schools can sneak into the top 25 and show recognition to their school. It will be very interesting to see what teams slip out of the top 25 and slip into the top 25 for the remainder of the 2024-2025 college football season.
The College Football Playoff is a four-team format used to crown the college football champion for that year. This year though, the playoff is expanding to 12 teams, something that has been in the works for multiple years. The format guarantees the highest-ranked Power-4 conferences (SEC, BIG 10, BIG 12, ACC), the top four spots. Next, the next seven spots go to the seven highest ranked teams besides those Power-4 conference champions. Lastly, the final spot as the 12th seed goes to the highest ranked Group of 5 conference champion (AAC, CUSA, MAC, MWC, Sun Belt). The hype for this playoff has acclimated over the past few years and now it is finally here, about to make this season one of the most memorable in history.
To wrap it all up, it will be interesting to see the end result of what happens for the rest of the season and how the new playoff format will shake out. This is a big jump from the four team playoff because teams can now lose a game and not have to one hundred percent worry about getting into the playoffs. It will be evident to assess which teams are real contenders and teams who are not contenders after the season concludes.