2025 Week 7 CFP Resume Rankings!

Welcome back to the 2025 College Football Playoff Resume Rankings!

We are back from vacation and starting this week with a little association game.  Feel free to play along if you want, trying to come up with the association between these teams before we provide the answers.  Here are our association game candidates:

1. Illinois and Notre Dame

2. TCU and Pitt

3. Miami and Texas Tech

4. Utah and USC

5. Louisville and Florida State

6. Oklahoma State and Oregon State

7. South Florida and Memphis

8. Ole Miss and BYU

9. UCLA and Marshall

10. Penn State and UMass

Answer Key:

1. Starting with an easy pair, Illinois and Notre Dame are both 2-loss teams with a pair of losses to Top 4 teams.  Both of these teams have resumes that qualify for CFP consideration despite the losses.  The predominant disparity is that the AP voters ranked Notre Dame at #13 and chose not to rank Illinois at all.

2. TCU and Pitt sit at #37 and #39 in the week 7 composite team strength ratings, and are sandwiched between a trio of preseason Top 13 teams, with then #2 Penn State now at #36, then #4 Clemson now at #38, and then #13 South Carolina now at #40 in the computer rating composite.

3. Miami and Texas Tech both received exactly 1 vote for first place in the 30 computer rating systems that contributed to the composite this week, from Whitlock and ESPN Efficiency Ratings respectively.  Notre Dame for the record received 3 such votes amongst models that strongly correlate with season results to date.

4. Utah and USC would both be CFP teams per the week 7 composite team strength ratings despite being 1-loss teams in the AP 20’s.  The computers have both Utah and USC ahead of all SEC contenders outside of Alabama, Texas A&M, and Georgia.

5. Louisville and Florida State share the distinction of being computer composite rated Top 25 teams despite not receiving any votes in the Week 7 AP Poll.  At #23 and #24 in the computer composite, both rank ahead of #25 Nebraska and the Group of 5 CFP selection (currently #19 South Florida).

6. Oklahoma State and Oregon State share the unfortunate distinction of not only being the worst of the former Power 5 schools, but also rating so poorly that they would expect to be a below average team in literally every conference, including perineal bottom feeders in the CUSA and MAC.

7. South Florida and Memphis on the other hand are the Group of 5 schools who would both rate as above average teams in all conferences except the SEC. Both schools would project to earn winning records in Big Ten conference play, a feat that preseason AP #2 Penn State is no longer projected to achieve.

8. Ole Miss and BYU are both unbeaten teams projected to lose their first games this weekend against Georgia and Utah respectively.  Both teams play in games our game quality metric marks in the elite tier, but neither have the “game of the week” despite the close projected margins and expected results.

9. UCLA and Marshall share a distinction of being the only teams on both the winning side and the losing side of one of our top 10 upsets of the season, with UCLA’s upset win over Penn State still cracking the top 10 and loss to New Mexico growing by the week, currently at #4.  Marshall meanwhile has picked up an unexpected loss to Missouri State to pair with their week 7 upset win over Old Dominion.

10. Penn State and UMass are what we call “axis teams” meaning that in the overall resume visualization you can find one of these teams setting the axis boundary for worst raw resume or worst team strength.  Penn State in this case has the worst raw resume by a good margin given their prominent losses as heavy favorites, and UMass continues to rate as the weakest team in the country by a heavy margin.

Week 7 CFP Resume Rankings

Notes on the CFP Resume Rankings

• AP Misses:

Illinois takes another loss, this time to Ohio State, and they continue to rate well in the resume rankings despite no longer being in the AP Top 25.  Believe it or not, Illinois still rates as the 20^th strongest team, and has the 9^th best raw resume.  Losses to the #1 and #2 teams in the country are expected, and the wins over the 11^th strongest team (USC) and 34^th strongest team (Duke) still add plenty to the resume.  The margins in those losses matter, and that’s why they have fallen to 20^th on strength, but the resume still merits ranking at this stage much higher than they belong.

Washington, with only 1-loss to a top ranked Ohio State, similarly ranks in our top 20 but sits outside of the AP top 25 this week.  Washington joins fellow former Pac-12 teams USC and Utah being ranked at least 5 places too low in this week’s AP rankings.

Tennessee, Missouri, and Vanderbilt are a trio of SEC teams ranked too high in this week’s AP poll, with each being at least 8 positions too high.  Missouri and Vanderbilt specifically are neck and neck with Tulane and Louisville in overall resume, and neither of those teams sniffed a top 25 ranking this week.

• Conference Breakdown:

If the playoff field were set today, we’d project five SEC teams (Texas A&M, Alabama, Ole Miss, Georgia, LSU), three Big Ten (Ohio State, Indiana, Illinois), one ACC (Miami), one Big 12 (Texas Tech), one independent (Notre Dame), and one G5 representative (South Florida).

Top 10 Unexpected Results of the Season

Where did Penn State go?  It turns out, when you continue accruing upset losses, they start to become less surprising.  The UCLA loss falls to 10^th on the list (Northwestern close behind at 11^th), surpassed at the top by Ball State’s week 6 surprise win over Ohio.  A pair of ACC upsets slot in at 2 and 3 (Syracuse over Clemson and West Virginia over Pitt).  UCLA’s renewed strength means the loss to New Mexico is rising again, and our new addition from week 7 is Marshall, who defeated Old Dominion in a 24-point route, while we’d still project Old Dominion as roughly a 5.5-point favorite in a rematch.

Week 8 Game of the Week

• No. 10 LSU at No. 17 Vanderbilt:

It’s another counter intuitive game of the week, with both #5 Ole Miss at #9 Georgia and #23 Utah at #15 BYU in the near vicinity in game quality.  When we reframe the matchups according to team strength rankings the picture is a little different.  This week we have #13 at #18 (LSU/Vanderbilt) with a -0.5 projected spread.  We have #12 at #9 (Ole Miss/Georgia) with a -4 projected spread.  We also have #10 at #19 (Utah/BYU) with a -1.5 projected spread.  All are extremely close, and if you are only in it for the “strongest” pair of teams you’ll gravitate to Ole Miss/Georgia, but if you want the best game as a combination of strength and close margins, that game projects to be played in Nashville this week.  Don’t get us wrong though, all 3 are fantastic games and well worth watching in succession if you are in a 1 television household.  This should be another fantastic weekend!

Top Models for Week 7: The Models that Beat Our Composite

• Rams (https://ramsrating.com/ncaa-fb/)

• Dolphin Predictive (http://www.dolphinsim.com/ratings/ncaa_fb/)

• (Close) CFB Data SRS (https://collegefootballdata.com/)

• (Close) Whitlock (http://whitlockrankings.com/fbrank1.htm)

That’s a wrap for Week 7! If you have questions about the CFP Resume Rankings or want to follow along, find us @CFPResumeRanks on X. Our DMs are open for inquiries or partnership opportunities. Have a great week, and let’s see what Week 8 brings!

[Note: For tables instead of graphics, visit our resume rankings page at https://cfpresumerankings.wixsite.com/cfpresumerankings/cfp-resume-rankings]