Tulane Football Jumps to #20 in CFP Polling

The Tulane football team is ranked for the third consecutive week and moves up to No. 20 in the fifth edition of the 2025 College Football Playoff (CFP) rankings released Tuesday night.

The Green Wave is currently ranked ahead of No. 25 James Madison, No. 24 North Texas, No. 23 Iowa, No. 22 Georgia Tech, and No. 21 Houston.

Last week, the TU was the only Group of Six team in the rankings. This week, the Sunbelt's James Madison slips in as does the American's North Texas, in a move that almost feels like one that would cover the CFP committee just in case Tulane loses on Friday. Though CFP Committee chair Hunter Yurachek didn't say so directly, the implication seemed to be there.

"JMU (James Madison) has been a very consistent team throughout, a team we have talked about for the past couple of weeks, and they've been creeping and creeping," Yurachek told the media. "Finally with their 11 wins, their strength of schedule really hasn't improved that much, but they're getting a lot of credit because they have gone through their schedule just with one loss earlier this year against a Louisville team that was ranked in our poll earlier, and they do have wins against an Old Dominion team that's 9-3 and a Washington State team that took one of the ranked teams, Ole Miss, played them to a three-point game earlier this year, as well."

Yurachek said given the amount of movement in the coaching ranks, teams were weighted according to the retention of coaches who would remain to coach their former teams.

"One of the principles in our selection protocols is the availability of coach and players," Yurachek told the media Thursday night. "We not only talked about the situation at Ole Miss, but we also talked about the offensive coordinator position at Oregon, the head coaching positions at James Madison, North Texas and Tulane. I think those coaches are going to be coaching their respective teams."

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 team was ranked No. 24 by the CFP committee during the 2023 season. The program was ranked at No. 17 by the CFP on Nov. 26, 2024. The team was at No. 24 in each of the last two weeks of rankings released on Nov. 18 and Nov. 25 before moving to No. 20 in the last playoff rankings of the regular season on Dec. 2.

Tulane is one of only 10 teams that has been ranked in the College Football Playoff rankings in each of the last four years along with Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, Ole Miss, Notre Dame, Texas, Louisville, and Tennessee.

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.

Portions Courtesy Tulane Athletics