I don’t know about y’all, but to me, it feels like the 2025 college football season flew by.
It feels like just yesterday we watched the Week-0 Farmageddon in Dublin, and now we have a playoff bracket. As Ferris Bueller once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Recommended Videos
SEE ALSO: Thompson scores late bucket in tied game, Rockets take down Harden’s Clippers in 115-113 thriller
I could go on and on with my football-induced sentimental emotions, but it’d be better for both of us if I saved the rest for my therapist. We have ourselves a bracket and four first-round games to discuss.
Let’s get right to it.
Friday, Dec. 19: Alabama at Oklahoma
This first-round matchup is unique among this year’s bracket, as two teams from the same conference who have already played each other this year will go head-to-head again.
In that matchup, Oklahoma went into Tuscaloosa and upset Alabama, 23-21, in a game that was paramount in the Sooners earning a playoff spot and the Crimson Tide being left out of first-round bye discourse.
Looking at the team stats from that first matchup, it’s borderline unbelievable that the Sooners won. Alabama had significantly more total yards (406 vs. 212) and first downs (23 vs. 12). They also played more disciplined football, committing far fewer penalties (five vs. two) and dominating time of possession (34:28 vs. 25:32). How did Alabama possibly lose a game with these advantages?
By turning the ball over. That’s how.
Alabama had three turnovers — a Ty Simpson interception, a Ty Simpson sack-fumble, and a fumble on a punt return by Ryan Williams. OU turned these mishaps into 17 points, all while committing zero turnovers of their own.
So, what does this weird outcome tell us about both of these teams? I have a few takeaways that I think give us the blueprint for their rematch.
First, Oklahoma’s defense is leading the way. This isn’t shocking, as head coach Brent Venables is about as much of a defensive guy as any head coach in the SEC. It shows in the stats, as OU ranks first in the SEC in points allowed per game (13.9) and yards allowed per game (273.6). But in my eyes, OU’s defensive prowess has become a red flag in playoff contexts.
It feels like they’re leaning on their defense to make stops out of desperation rather than preference. In SEC play, OU has scored more than 30 points just once. Quarterback John Mateer, who had Heisman Trophy hype through the first month, now has a pedestrian 12-touchdown, 10-interception stat line. In almost all SEC offensive metrics, OU is hanging around with South Carolina, Florida, and Kentucky — not exactly the biggest fish in the pond.
Meanwhile, Alabama heads into the game with a lower stock than many expected a month ago. With the aforementioned loss to OU, a close win over a bad Auburn team in the Iron Bowl, and a 28-7 shellacking at the hands of Georgia in the SEC Championship, Bama limped into the playoff with one of the lowest at-large selections.
Still, there’s a lot to like about the Tide in this matchup. Simpson’s rocky play as of late has cooled down his NFL draft hype, but let’s not forget the season he’s had in its entirety. He’s second in the SEC in touchdown passes (26) with just five picks, and he’s had Alabama’s passing game humming, leading Bama to be the only team to dethrone Georgia in the regular season.
Bama still can’t run the ball (like, at all — 14th in rushing yards per game in the SEC), so expect OU to force Simpson to beat them with his arm early and often. If you think Simpson is up for that task, it’ll likely go a long way in how you predict this game.
I tend to believe Simpson and Bama head coach Kalen DeBoer will be able to replicate their wins in dependent team stats from the last showing — and limit the turnovers that let OU hang around despite being dominated.
Mike’s prediction: Alabama 27, Oklahoma 17
Saturday, Dec. 20: Miami at Texas A&M
Next up, we’ve got the Miami Hurricanes heading to Kyle Field to take on the Texas A&M Aggies. This matchup pairs the only two schools who beat Notre Dame this year, forcing the Fighting Irish to miss the playoff and subsequently whine and pout until they were appeased with special playoff privileges moving forward. But that’s neither here nor there.
Miami looked unbeatable through early October, rising as high as No. 2 in the AP Poll at 5-0. Then the wheels fell off when Carson Beck threw four interceptions in a 24-21 home loss to Louisville. Just when everybody assumed the Canes were finished, they dropped another game in a 26-20 overtime loss at SMU, with Beck throwing just two picks this time around.
Surprisingly, though, Miami has not felt much resistance besides these two losses. They won eight games by 17 or more points this year, and Beck threw more than half of his 10 interceptions in those two losses alone.
So, your opinion on the Hurricanes probably comes down to an answer to this question: Did they have an easy schedule and falter the moment they played competent teams, or did they simply dominate two-thirds of their schedule and slip up a few times along the way?
Texas A&M had a unique path to this moment. After they beat Notre Dame, the Aggies cruised through the SEC, picking apart every team they faced and leading to the infamous firing of LSU’s Brian Kelly following a smackdown in Baton Rouge. A&M quarterback Marcel Reed wasn’t a Heisman finalist.
However, the last leg of the A&M season exposed some cracks. They went into the half against South Carolina (a team that finished the year with four wins), down 30-3, and it took some heroics, luck, and choking by the Gamecocks for the Aggies to sneak off with a 1-point win. Two weeks later, they went into Austin and got outscored by the Longhorns 24-7 in the second half, losing 27-17 to their archrivals and destroying their perfect season in the process.
Texas A&M’s SEC schedule has also exposed some red flags. In a conference with 16 teams, it’s unavoidable that not every schedule is going to be created equal. But the Aggies got schedule luck to a historic degree. The teams the Aggies faced that went into the year perceived as conference heavyweights (Auburn, LSU, Florida, Missouri) all fell short of expectations. In fact, the Aggies played seven of the conference’s bottom-nine teams. Their one conference game out of that group? Texas — and we just talked about how that went.
So, your opinion on the Aggies probably comes down to an answer to this question: Did they have an easy schedule and falter the moment they played a competent team, or did they simply dominate most of their schedule and slip up once along the way? Let me know if you see the comparison here.
When asking this near-identical question about both programs, I’m more confident that the Aggies aren’t frauds. Miami’s conference, the ACC, was horrific this year. In fact, the team that actually won the conference championship, the 8-5 Duke Blue Devils, didn’t even sniff CFP discussions, as the committee decided to give a second Group-of-Five champion the nod.
By comparison, the Aggies played in the SEC, which even in a down year, is nothing to turn your nose up at. Regardless of the win-loss records on paper, there are teams putting serious resources into football from top to bottom. Even Vanderbilt, the SEC’s academic powerhouse and historic football punching bag, won 10 games this year. There’s no Boston College in the SEC.
Mike’s prediction: Texas A&M 31, Miami 28
MORE COLLEGE FOOTBALL: Texas Tech LB Jacob Rodriguez wins 2025 Lombardi Award
Saturday, Dec. 20: Tulane at Ole Miss
If you’re looking for a savvy pick for the “huge upset” in the opening round, this is probably your best shot. But the odds are still heavily in Ole Miss’s favor.
These two teams actually faced off earlier in the year, too, with Ole Miss winning in a dominant 45-10 thrashing. But a lot has changed since then.
Ole Miss enters with an 11-1 record, complete with a big road win against Oklahoma and a 43-35 loss to Georgia that has aged better with every passing week. Backup quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, who was playing at Division II Ferris State a year ago, took over the starting job after an injury and became a star.
One problem, though: Their head coach is no longer with the team.
In one of the most shocking developments in recent memory, then-Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin accepted the LSU coaching job. There were lengthy discussions about whether he would continue to coach the Rebels through the playoff, but that ultimately fell through. Defensive coordinator Pete Golding was named interim head coach (as well as permanent head coach), and offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. will remain for the playoff, even though he has agreed to coach at LSU next year with Kiffin.
Ole Miss still carries some playoff concerns beyond their coach-less status. Even though they largely dominated the SEC, they ran into some of the same problems A&M had. Excluding the OU and Georgia games I mentioned earlier, Ole Miss hasn’t exactly torn through the SEC. They had one-possession wins over Kentucky, Arkansas, and LSU.
On the other side of the ball, we have the Green Wave, another team whose head coach has taken another job, but under much more cordial circumstances. Jon Sumrall has already been named as the next head coach at Florida, but he has agreed to see Tulane’s season through to the end of the playoff.
Could that impact the team? Sure, maybe. But I have my doubts about it having as much of an impact as Kiffin’s departure, as Ole Miss just lost the entire cult-of-personality figure of their program mid-playoff bid.
As far as Tulane’s roster goes, you have to talk about Jake Retzlaff. After bursting onto the scene at BYU last year, Retzlaff was forced to transfer after a personal situation clashed with the school’s strict social policies. Now at Tulane, he led the Green Wave to an 11-2 record while tallying nearly 3,500 total yards of offense.
It’s right to have the same concerns about Tulane as you did about Ole Miss’s “easy-ish” SEC schedule, only to a much higher degree. The American Athletic Conference isn’t awful, but it’s far from the cream of the crop. Tulane played just three Power-Four teams in total this year, going 2-1, with the aforementioned beatdown against the team they’ll now face again.
The big question for this game is: Do you think Ole Miss losing its coach can swing the game in a way that negates the utter beatdown we saw in this matchup back in September?
In this author’s opinion: No freaking way.
Mike’s prediction: Ole Miss 34, Tulane 20
Saturday, Dec. 20: James Madison at Oregon
On paper, this is one of the strangest playoff matchups in recent memory.
James Madison has the ACC to thank dearly, because an unprecedented combination of team incompetence and conference tie-breaking rules led to the 8-5 Duke Blue Devils winning the conference. This left the CFP committee with a choice to make for their final conference champion auto-bid: a five-loss ACC team or a second Group-of-Five team with a 12-1 record. They chose the latter, and the Dukes are dancing.
Oregon enters the matchup following a successful yet weird regular season. They mowed through their first five opponents with little resistance, moving to 5-0 with an overtime win over Penn State, who, believe it or not, was No. 3 and undefeated at the time.
After a bye, they hosted undefeated Indiana. The Ducks tied the game at 20 in the fourth quarter, but interceptions on back-to-back drives doomed them in the 30-20 defeat. The Hoosiers went on to win the Big Ten and secure the top overall CFP seed, so a well-aged loss, to be sure.
Since that ding, Oregon faced very little resistance on its path to an 11-1 record. Their only one-possession win was an 18-16 victory on a last-second field goal, but plenty of great teams have struggled in the cold in Kinnick Stadium, so they get a pass there.
Oregon quarterback Dante Moore has put up solid stats in his first year as the Ducks’ starter, tallying more than 2,900 total yards and 25 total touchdowns. He has emerged as a probable first-round selection in the upcoming NFL draft.
The Ducks are possibly the most balanced team in the opening round, boasting the Big Ten’s third-ranked offense in yards per game (465.2) and the conference’s third-ranked defense in average points allowed (14.8).
On the other side, JMU has played just one Power-Four team all year. To their credit, the Louisville Cardinals are no slouch, but the Dukes lost, 28-14, for their lone defeat of the year.
So you’re giving me one of the Big Ten’s most balanced teams against a Sun Belt team that doesn’t have a Power-Four win? This feels like a no-brainer. Feel free to make plans for after the first quarter of this game Saturday evening.
Mike’s prediction: Oregon 49, James Madison 12