Green Wave Bump into Playoff Picture with CFP
The Wave Break into the Top-25 of the Playoff Rankings
Tulane football’s team is ranked No. 24 in the second edition the 2025 College Football Playoff (CFP) rankings released on November 18. This is the fourth consecutive season that Tulane has earned a CFP ranking. The team entered the 2023 Goodyear Cotton Bowl ranked No. 16 by the CFP before upsetting then No. 10 USC by a 46-45 score. The Green Wave was ranked No. 24 by the CFP committee during the 2023 season. The program was most recently ranked by the CFP on Nov. 26, 2024 at No. 17.
Tulane is currently ranked ahead of No. 25 Arizona State and just behind No. 20 Tennessee, No. 21 Illinois, No. 22 Missouri, and No. 23 Houston in the CFP rankings. While this is the second year of the 12-team playoff, the format is different than last season. The five highest-ranked conference champions will earn automatic bids, while the next seven-best non-conference champions will earn at-large spots. From there, the 12 teams in the field will be seeded by ranking, regardless of whether they won their conference championship. Therefore, the four highest-ranked teams in the field will earn byes, with seeds Nos. 5-12 playing in the first round of the Playoff.
CFP Committee Chair Believes the Wave are the Class of the Group of Six Right Now
Hunter Yurachek, College Football Playoff Selection Committee Chair, was asked when the committee was looking at a team like Tulane that has that 22-point loss to UTSA, how that stacks up in comparison to James Madison, a team that is 9-1 but that doesn't have that overall strength of schedule compared to a Tulane.
"I think that was the main differentiator between when we had some discussions about the Group of Six teams -- and James Madison was in that discussion this week -- it's really their strength of schedule," Yurachek said. "They played one Power 4 team, and they lost that game at Louisville 28-14. Then you look at the strength of Tulane's schedule, playing three Power 4 teams that they lost to, our sixth ranked team in Ole Miss, but they beat Duke and beat Northwestern. They've (Tulane) got wins also in the league, in the American, a very strong league, against Memphis and East Carolina.
"The loss versus UTSA is a metric that is on Tulane's schedule," continued Yurachek. "We have a lot of respect for James Madison and the team that they are, especially they're really good on the defensive side of the ball, but the strength of schedule is probably the biggest differentiator between Tulane and James Madison at this time."
Yurachek was then asked what made Tulane the most deserving Group of Five team to earn a rank? What impressed the committee the most, and what was at the forefront of those discussions?
"First and foremost, the American is a really good conference this year, a really top heavy conference," Yurachek pointed out. "Then you look at Tulane's schedule, the fact that they went outside of their conference and played three Power 4 schools in Northwestern, Duke, and Ole Miss, winning two of those three games, then a very impressive win at Memphis and a win against East Carolina, which is really coming on late. That's really what the committee saw with regards to Tulane as a team that checks in at 24 this week."
Portions Courtesy of Tulane Athletics
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.