UNLV moves up in latest CFP rankings, ‘confident’ in playoff path

During Barry Odom’s weekly Monday press conference, the UNLV coach was asked how sure he was that a win at Boise State would result in a College Football Playoff berth.

“We win, we’re in. I mean, I’m very confident,” Odom said. “You look at all the different measurable things that go into it, the champion of our league will be in the game.”

The updated CFP rankings support his sentiment.

The Rebels (10-2) climbed to No. 20 in the rankings released Tuesday, up from No. 22 last week.

The Rebels face Boise State (11-1), which moved up from No. 11 to No. 10, in the Mountain West championship game Friday in Boise, Idaho.

That game appears to be a de facto play-in game to the inaugural 12-team playoff, which automatically places the five highest-ranked conference champions in the field.

The four highest-ranked conference champions will earn the top four seeds and receive first-round byes, while the remaining eight teams will play each other in the first round on the home field of the higher-seeded team.

Fortunately for the Rebels, Tulane lost to Memphis on Thanksgiving, dropping the Green Wave out of the CFP rankings and effectively eliminating the American Athletic Conference from the race to claim the fifth automatic bid for a conference champion.

AAC members Army and Memphis are in the top 25 this week, with Army returning to the rankings at No. 24 and Memphis slipping in at No. 25. Army will host Tulane in the AAC title game Friday, but there’s virtually no chance a win would help either team pass the Boise State-UNLV winner.

That said, conference championship weekend is bound to feature some upsets that will disrupt the rankings. CFP selection committee chair Warde Manuel, Michigan’s athletic director, said during a teleconference about the updated standings that the committee isn’t looking ahead.

“We will evaluate the results of the games as they occur,” Manuel said. “I can’t speak to what could happen if all the underdogs win, those kind of things. We don’t get into trying to determine what we would do beforehand. We will just sit in the room after we watch the games together and evaluate what we saw and rank the top 25.”

National outlook

Miami’s playoff hopes took an all-but-final nosedive, while Alabama’s got a boost in the last rankings before the CFP bracket is set Sunday.

The Hurricanes (10-2) moved down six spots to No. 12 — the first team out of the projected bracket after suffering their second loss of the season. They are one spot behind the Crimson Tide (9-3), who won last week and moved up two spots to No. 11, where they are projected as the last team in and the fourth from the SEC.

To make things worse for the ’Canes, Manuel said there was no way for them to leapfrog Alabama since neither team plays this week.

He mentioned three key data points: Alabama was 3-1 against current top 25 teams and Miami is 0-1; Alabama is 6-1 against winning teams while Miami is 4-2; and Miami has lost two of its past three games.

Oregon stayed at No. 1 for the fifth straight week and will head into Saturday’s Big Ten title game against Penn State as the only undefeated team in big-time college football.

Ohio State moved down four spots to No. 6 after its loss to Michigan.

That bumped Texas up a spot to No. 2, Penn State to No. 3, Notre Dame to No. 4 and Georgia to No. 5.

The playoffs start Dec. 20, with the title game Jan. 20 in Atlanta.

Contact Callie Fin at cfin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @CallieJLaw on X. The Associated Press contributed to this story.