As a Clemson assistant coach for the College Football Playoff’s first eight years, Tony Elliott learned how to ignore the selection committee’s late-season rankings, a weekly, made-for-TV gabfest that fans and media devour like a game-day buffet.
Indeed, the Tigers were included in all 47 CFP rankings during that 2014-21 stretch.
Elliott’s challenge now is to impart such wisdom to a Virginia team that as head coach he has improbably elevated to playoff contention this season. The Cavaliers are 14th in the committee’s initial top 25, which ESPN’s Rece Davis unveiled Tuesday evening with, as always, bated breath.
Not bad for a program that the panel had ranked only three times previously, once in 2018 and twice in 2019, and never higher than No. 23. Not bad for a squad that ACC media projected to finish 14th among the conference’s 17 teams this season.
Virginia leads five ACC squads in the rankings, followed by No. 15 Louisville, No. 17 Georgia Tech, No. 18 Miami and No. 24 Pitt. But while each of the other power conferences — Big Ten, SEC and Big 12 — has multiple teams among the top 12, the ACC has none.
That doesn’t bode well for the league sending a second representative into the 12-team bracket.
But as Elliott counseled, Tuesday’s evaluation from the 12-person committee, which includes Virginia athletic director Carla Williams, is irrelevant to the Cavaliers’ task at hand, which is to win the ACC title and the accompanying automatic bid.
The field is comprised of the five highest-rated conference champions, plus seven at-large selections based solely on the committee’s rankings. So even though 14th this week, Virginia would be the No. 4 league champion and seeded 11th, with a first-round game at No. 6 Ole Miss.
“I told them yesterday, I’m going to address it once and that’s the only time I’m going to talk about it.” Elliott said at his weekly news conference Tuesday afternoon, about eight hours before the CFP show. “This is the week that it starts. And I encourage you not to get caught up in it, not to watch it. …
“I can’t stop them, but we’re definitely not going to sit down and watch it. And I told the staff, I said, ‘Hey, I’d encourage you not to really watch it because it’s not really for us right now, to be honest with you. Because again, it’s just like preseason rankings, right? I think everybody was making a big deal of where we were ranked in the preseason. And I was like, OK, it’s a preseason ranking.”
THE FIRST 12-TEAM CFP BRACKET PROJECTION OF THE SEASON
The committee selected Memphis as the best team from the remaining conferences. pic.twitter.com/EU6NCc33Ds
— ESPN (@espn) November 5, 2025
Virginia (8-1, 5-0 ACC) presented an intriguing case study for the committee — Williams is recused from all discussions and votes involving UVA.
The Cavaliers have won seven consecutive games and are the lone ACC team without a conference loss. Only Indiana (nine) and Ohio State and Brigham Young (eight each) are riding longer winning streaks.
Moreover, Virginia is among the Bowl Subdivision’s top 20 in scoring offense, turnover margin, third-down conversion rate and third-down defense.
But UVA hasn’t authored an emphatic victory since a 48-20 conquest of Stanford in late September. The Cavaliers are 5-0 since, by an aggregate margin of 24 points, and are only the second ACC team ever to win three overtime games in a season — Virginia Tech in 2012 is the other.
“Everyone calls them the Cardiac Cavs,” Elliott said after Saturday’s 31-21 victory at Cal, “but really it’s a mindset. These guys believe, right. They’re going to find a way to win.”
Last month’s overtime win at Louisville (7-1, 4-1) is Virginia’s most notable result, but ESPN’s Football Power Index ranks the Cavaliers’ schedule 85th among 136 FBS teams, the worst of any team in the CFP top 20.
“Certainly we looked at schedule strength when we considered Virginia,” said committee chairman Mack Rhoades, the athletic director at Baylor. “We looked at three overtime games. The Florida State win, I think that’s hard, quite frankly, for the ACC. A win over Florida State has lost its luster a little bit as time has progressed, as games have accumulated. A really close game, obviously, at North Carolina and then a close game against, again on the road, at California.
“To Virginia’s credit, beating a really good Louisville team, at Louisville, overtime. That’s a really, really good win. And I would just say in general for the ACC: Five teams in the top 25, four in the top 20, and there’s still a lot of ball to play.”
UVA closes the regular season with contests against Wake Forest (5-3, 2-3), Duke (5-3, 4-1) and Virginia Tech (3-6, 2-3). The game at Duke next week, Virginia’s lone remaining road date, is among several this month that match ACC championship game aspirants.
“We won’t change our approach,” Elliott said. “If anything, we’ll just be hammering more. Hey, cut your phone off. Quit talking to friends. Cut your family off. That’s the hard part. You’ve got to cut everybody off, to be honest with you, because everyone’s going to want to start talking about it. And the moment you start listening, then you’re distracted, and you don’t put in the quality work that you need to be successful.”
ESPN’s playoff predictor — the formula is unknown — gives Virginia a 29% chance of making the 12-team CFP, tops of any ACC team. The conference’s champion is virtually assured of qualifying for the field.
The highest-ranked champion among the Group of Five conferences is guaranteed CFP inclusion, and ESPN’s playoff predictor rates the Sun Belt’s James Madison (28%) and American’s North Texas (28%), South Florida (26%) and Memphis (21%) as the most likely Group of Five representative.
No Group of Five team is ranked this week, but the CFP said Memphis is the closest to cracking the poll.
JMU (7-1, 5-0) has won six straight games since losing at Louisville and has pitched four consecutive second-half shutouts, including against Old Dominion. The Dukes play at Marshall (4-4, 2-2) on Saturday.
“If you’re even in that (playoff) conversation, it probably means you did a couple things right along the way,” JMU coach Bob Chesney said Monday. “And what were those things that you’ve done right? Being able to dance with the one that brought you I think is the most important thing you can do right now in understanding the way we handle our week. The way we handle (practice) Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday will determine a lot with what happens on Saturdays.
“So the only thing we can control is our day-to-day basis and our day-to-day process, and I think our guys are very locked in on that. I think they know there’s a ton more we need to continue to improve on. I think we’re playing some good football right now, our best football of the year. We just have to continue to do that.”
David Teel, david.teel@virginiamedia.com
