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_THE__BOULDER_ Ballot for 2025 Week 15

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Dec. 2, 2025, 7:37 a.m.

Overall Rationale: Personal Thoughts. I try to make all my rankings prior to seeing any AP polls or the CFB rankings.

Rank Team Reason
1 Indiana Hoosiers Indiana/OSU are really 1A, 1B for me. Hard to say what will happen until it does. Looking forward to the B1G Championship game.
2 Ohio State Buckeyes Dominant win in the snow against Michigan. Finally got over the hump. See above.
3 Georgia Bulldogs After the Texas A&M loss, UGA becomes the highest-ranked SEC team at #3. They will be playing Alabama in the SEC Championship game. Was not an easy road game against GT, but it seems like they started to handle the game in the 2nd quarter and never gave up the lead.
4 Texas Tech Red Raiders The highest-ranked Big 12 team, 11-1 Texas Tech who only lost a game with their starting QB out. Makes me think this team could be pretty dangerous. A rematch against BYU is scheduled for next weekend's Big 12 Championship game and I'm looking forward to it.
5 Ole Miss Rebels Moving up after the TAMU loss, Ole Miss handled business in the egg bowl. Looking forward to seeing what they can do in the playoffs.
6 Oregon Ducks My 3rd B1G team on the list, Oregon comes in at #6. Tough to decide who to put higher, Oregon or TAMU, as they are both 1-loss teams each with only one currently ranked win. Texas A&M's win is better than Oregon's, but I believe Oregon's loss, against a top 2 team in the sport this year, to be much less bad to A&M's loss against Texas. While Texas is not a bad team at this point in the season, they have 3 losses to Indiana's 0.
7 Texas A&M Aggies After losing to Texas in Austin, TAMU drops from #3 to #7 in my book. They're still only a 1-loss team, but their best (and currently only ranked) win is @Notre Dame. Unfortunately, while Texas is a top 15 team in my mind, this loss is far worse than Oregon's loss to Indiana, and so I'm putting A&M at #7 overall.
8 Oklahoma Sooners Oklahoma's losses have come to my #6 Ole Miss and #13 Texas. Their wins have come against my #10 Alabama, #18 Michigan, and # 25 Tennessee. The game against LSU was closer than I would have liked, but they've had a good season overall. Out of the two-loss teams, they're my #1.
9 BYU Cougars BYU comes in at #9 overall for me and is the last of the 1-loss teams on my list. Overall, they've had a good season, beating my #15 Utah and some other decent teams in Cincinnati, Iowa State, and Arizona. Their lone loss comes in a blowout against my #4 Texas Tech, whom they rematch in the Big 12 Conference Championship game.
10 Alabama Crimson Tide Alabama comes in as my 2nd place 2-loss team, coming in at #10 overall on my list. Wins against my #3 Georgia & #14 Vanderbilt, but losses to an unranked FSU team and my #8 Oklahoma Sooners. While the win against Georgia is obviously very good, that second loss prevents Alabama from being any higher on my list, but they are absolutely a top 10 team in my eyes. Had Alabama not lost to FSU at the beginning of the season, they'd probably be a top 5 team. While the loss was early and they have recovered well, the second loss against Oklahoma late in the season holds them back.
11 Miami Hurricanes After all is said and done, Miami have completed at 10-win season with wins over Notre Dame and Pitt, ultimately beating Pitt by more than Notre Dame did. Because they ended up with the same record and a head-to-head win over Notre Dame, as well has beating a common opponent by a larger margin, I'm inclined to put Miami as my 3rd place 2-loss team, over Notre Dame, and put the Canes at #11 overall. They will be missing the ACC Championship game due to losses to Louisville and SMU, but they come in at the highest ranked ACC team on my list. Unfortunately, they did not get to play other ACC contenders like Virginia and Duke, the two teams that ARE going to the ACC Championship, but I'm inclined to believe that this team, for all its flaws, is better than either of them despite being in 3rd place in the ACC due to the conference's whack scheduling.
12 Notre Dame Fighting Irish My fourth place 2-loss team, Notre Dame comes in at #12 overall. Losses to my #7 A&M (at home by 1) and #11 Miami (away by 3 in the season opener), show they're a competitive team, and they've beaten a fairly good USC, a decent Pitt team, and blew out a decent Navy team, but I don't think this necessitates that they be any higher than this. I would have them round out a 12-team playoff if no G5 team takes the final spot, but I cannot think of any arguments for them to be ranked higher than any of the teams above them.
13 Texas Longhorns Texas is my first 3-loss team on the board, with wins over my #7 A&M, #9 Oklahoma, and #14 Vanderbilt, but losses to my #2 OSU, #3 UGA, and a bad loss away at Florida (we suck bro). I know the team was still finding an identity at that point in the season, but I think they found it a little too late as, despite beating Oklahoma in the RRS the following week, they followed that promising performance up with absolutely dreadful games against Kentucky and Mississippi State. They were able to take down Vanderbilt at the beginning of November, but I think Texas has failed to put on any complete performances this year. Their defense has let up a lot of points against both tough and relatively not-so-tough teams. I do want to say that I think they have done a good job pulling the season together to end up 9-3 after some of those early performances, but I can't reward them enough to put them into the playoff picture, even with their very notable wins.
14 Vanderbilt Commodores Vandy is another 10-2 team but that doesn't mean I will have them ranked above all 9-3 teams. At this point, the only team that they've beaten who is currently ranked (at least by me at #25) is Tennessee, and they have losses to my #10 Alabama and #13 Texas. So that's not to say they're bad or undeserving of this spot, but they are not deserving of anything above this, in my opinion.
15 Utah Utes Utah is a team I've been high on all year. I think they're very good at dominating teams that they can, for lack of a better term, outphysical. The only teams they were not able to do that to this year are their two losses, a close loss to my #9 BYU in the Holy War and a blowout loss to my #4 Texas Tech earlier in the season. I still believe they're a good team, and it would have been cool to see them have a shot at Texas Tech again, but I don't think their wins, however dominant, quite match up to some of the marquee wins of the teams ahead of them. In a way, they're kind of like Indiana or OSU in that they've really blown out every team they've beaten (Indiana's exceptions of PSU and Oregon notwithstanding), but they weren't able to make it to 12-0 like those teams, and I don't think that, with the exception of the somewhat decent Cincinnati and Arizona State teams, they've really accrued any notable wins.
16 Virginia Cavaliers Despite being first in the ACC, I can't rank Virginia any higher than 16, in my opinion. They are also a 2-loss team and round out all the P4 2-loss teams on my list, with their losses coming to a surprisingly non-conference loss to NC State and a home in-conference loss to a somewhat decent Wake Forest team. With that being said, while I started thinking this team was good after the FSU win, and I still think they're fairly good, I have been accusing them of getting away with it for a large chunk of the year. While there is something to be said about being able to pull out the win, and I do consider luck to be a valuable, albeit untrainable, skill, I do not think they quite deserve to be ranked as high on this list as some of the teams above them if I am looking at this as a combination of "most-deserving" and "best" teams list. They play Duke in the ACC championship, whom they beat fairly handily a few weeks ago, but I'm not sure if winning that would be enough to get them into the top 12 for a playoff spot, if you are concerned about that. Still, an absolutely great season from them in terms of record, and I hope they are able to continue this trend next year, as I particularly enjoy when teams like FSU and Miami are deprived of conference championships.
17 USC Trojans USC is my second place 3-loss team, with wins over Michigan, Iowa, and Nebraska but losses at Illinois (by 2 points, ugly game though), at Notre Dame, and at Oregon. Interestingly enough, all their losses were on the road, and Illinois is a decent team even if they're not quite top 25, so it's not the worst set of losses in the world. I have them at 1 spot above Michigan due to the head-to-head win, but, while they had a decent year, I'm sure USC fans are probably hoping they could have had that Illinois game back and maybe had a shot at the playoffs. Their QB, Maiava, is a junior, and I'm not sure if he's coming back, but USC had one of the most explosive offenses in the B1G, so, if he stays, they could be a force to be reckoned with next year.
18 Michigan Wolverines My third place 3-loss team, Michigan had a pretty good season in year two of Sherrone Moore, improving on last year's 8-5. Losses to this year's OSU, Oklahoma, and USC are not bad losses generally, but the Wolverines did fail to put up more than 13 points in any of those games, so their offense probably needs some work in the off season.
19 North Texas Mean Green My top choice for G5 teams, 11-1 North Texas. They are absolutely beatable, as demonstrated by their loss to USF at home, but they've done well to recover from that and clean up in the rest of conference play. They play Tulane in the AAC championship game (I don't respect the name change), but they've got the best shot, imo, of being a G5 candidate to the playoffs.
20 James Madison Dukes JMU is another 11-1 G5 team, currently leading the Sun Belt, and will be playing Troy in the Sun Belt Championship game. I don't foresee this being an issue for them, and JMU's only loss is to a decent Louisville team towards the beginning of the season, but I wouldn't say they're my favorite pick out of the G5 teams to make it to the playoffs.
21 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets While it was, technically, a close loss to UGA, UGA had control of the game from the 2nd quarter onwards. Georgia Tech is a team that I like for their willingness to fight through the entire game, but they are also a team who I had been questioning most of the year, as many of their wins were tight games. While one can argue that they won those games even if they were tough wins, I would still argue they were getting away with it, and it eventually caught up to them in the back half of the season with losses to NC State and Pitt. Neither of those teams are bad, and neither is UGA (unfortunately), but these 3 late losses have dropped GT out of ACC Championship game contention and down to #21 in my book.
22 Tulane Green Wave Another good AAC team (again, name change), Tulane's only losses are to Ole Miss and to UTSA. While Ole Miss was quite understandable, UTSA is currently middle of the conference and dropped 48 points on the Green Wave. I do think they're still a pretty good team, but they're not my favorite in the AAC to win the conference - I find UNT's loss to USF to be a bit more forgivable.
23 Navy Midshipmen I don't think many people really rank Navy but the Midshipmen are #3 in the AAC and 9-2 overall. If I recall correctly, the Army Navy game does not technically affect playoff rankings? I know it's because it's technically a non-conference game but I feel like that's kind of ridiculous and, if it's not going to count, both teams need to play an extra game to get up to 12 games for the season. I also do believe we need to go back to having a week's break in between the end of the regular season and the CCGs so that Army/Navy is the only game on. But I can't really do anything about the schedules. Still, they've had a pretty decent team overall with wins over USF and Memphis, so nice job cadets.
24 Houston Cougars While both Houston and Arizona are 9-3 overall and 6-3 in Big 12 play, Houston has head-to-head wins over Arizona AND Arizona state, which led me to placing them at #24 overall. To be honest, #24 - #27 are somewhat interchangeable for me. I think there are arguments for Pitt and Tennessee to both be #24 and #25 respectively, but I gave out the edge to Houston and Arizona because of their overall records. Houston HAS looked very good at times but has some narrow wins over not-so-good teams like Oregon State and UCF, as well as losses to West Virginia and TCU. TCU is 8-4, and has wins over Arizona State and SMU, so they're definitely not bad, but I was thinking Houston was better than what they showed on the field in these games. The loss to Texas Tech is a non-starter. I will say that, in the end, Pitt is the only one out of the four teams I mentioned that has what I would consider to be a current top #25 win, but honestly, 25 is an arbitrary number to stop at so it's whatever. In the end, though, I went with total record as the main factor and chose Houston and Arizona as the final two teams of the top #25.
25 Arizona Wildcats Arizona has some good wins like @ Cincy and @ASU, close losses to BYU and @Houston, and a pretty big loss to Iowa State who is 8-4. For more information on my thoughts, see above.

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