College Football Live - CFB Live - Week 12 Recap/Next Two Weeks Matter

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Join our crew Zubin Mehenti, Sam Acho, Tom Luginbill, Pete Thamel and Heather Dinich for College Football Live. Virginia Tech hires a new head coach, find out who and how well this fits for the program. After Texas falls to Georgia over the weekend, hear what head coach Steve Sarkisian has to say and what this means for Arch Manning and the team looking ahead. As we prepare for new CFP rankings, we'll hear from Heather Dinich and the crew on what the committee may be thinking and where teams may fall. All that and more on CFB Live! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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He changed the culture. He changed sports. Booja, presented by Modelo, premieres on December 10th at 9 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. Straight ahead on college football live out of the tunnel on this Tuesday. Complete coverage of the Hokies new hire of Virginia Tech and James Franklin can rehab each other's image. The Texas Longhorns, were they overrated, properly rated, or as Steve Sarkesian said, something completely different. Wait until you see what the coach said about his three-loss team and six and a half hours away from the latest playoff rankings are Playoff Insider on the biggest committee questions. She's got for tonight.

And with that, we welcome here inside college football live. Pete, Tom, Sam Zubin here with you. The coaching dominoes are starting to fall a few weeks back. Matt Rulopsda State in Nebraska. And now we've got our first big move with James Franklin going to Virginia Tech. His new gig, let's discuss it. So here's the deal, right? Six days after getting fired, he shows up with Pete and the gang on college game day and says,

look, I'm ready to go and win a championship somewhere else. Five weeks later, the destination is Blacksburg. Virginia. He is nothing, if not a program builder, and Virginia Tech clearly needs to be built. They did put forth a $229 million capital investment admitting as such that their commitment did not match their energy. And with that, let's start here with Pete. You kind of broke this story late last week. The rumblings are there. It's now official. Take us through the industry buzz on what you're hearing now that this is official and James Franklin is off the market. In industry-wide, this has really been received as a Grand Slam hire, and you use the proper phrase in the intro.

James Franklin is an elite program builder. He elevated Vanderbilt out of a century of bad football and turned them into a winner. He then went to Penn State, which was amid perhaps the worst scandal we've seen in modern college sports in dealing with the fallout and the sanctions from that. And he rebuilt them to where they won a league title three seasons after his own. arrival. James Franklin has built consistently. He's won consistently. He's an elite recruiter and he's also a developer. Penn State players year after year at the Combine were among the highest performers. James Franklin knows the bones and the guts of how to get a program going and obviously has the recruiting chops in the DMV, the 757, those areas he's very familiar with

to get things going and get them going quickly at Virginia Tech. Yeah, Pete, two stops at Maryland. As you referenced the recruiting knowledge of the DMV and the state of Virginia, you know, obviously building a program has a direct correlation to recruiting. Well, in today's college football climate, in order to be at your best in that area, you're going to have to have the resources put forth through the university with top-down alignment to allow the front porch of Virginia Tech to be led by its football program. And I don't think James Franklin goes anywhere near a job where he doesn't have total autonomy and doesn't have the resources to go out and do this thing right, because you

You've got everything else you need there at Virginia Tech to wave a magic wand and have James Franklin get this program turned around rapidly because of the resources coupled with the recruiting knowledge. Well, it's not just the resources and the recruiting knowledge. It's also the fact that Virginia Tech is a national brand. They have not had the success that you would have thought a team Mike Virginia Tech would have had over the last decade or so. But you think about going back to about 20 or 15 or so years ago, even before them. And this is a brand where high school kids will hear about Virginia Tech and hear about Enter Sandman and hear about some of the players like Michael Vic, et cetera. And there's this desire to want to rebuild a program like that.

So they're not starting from scratch nor are they starting from Ground Zero. There is an idea of a guy who can build a program. He's done it before, a national recruiting, you know, the recruiting hotbed, but also a place where players would want to go. All those athletes in the DMV in that Baltimore area, right, in the Virginia area, Virginia techs a place that they want to help rebuild. So perfect home run higher, but more so because of the school and the brand that is built. Let me just accentuate one thing before we move on to both Pete and Tom said,

which is I took a look at the Penn State recruiting rankings and the class of 2023. If you take a look at the top 10 players from the state or Commonwealth of Virginia in 2023, six of those 10 went to Penn State. And now the mission is to keep those guys home and play for Franklin at a his new locale. The only name bigger in the coasting search, of course, that James Franklin right now is Lane Kiffin. You've probably seen some stories over the last 24 hours about how his family has visited a couple of SEC locales. With head coaching openings, you probably also saw a story that his current employer Ole Miss put a deadline on him to make a decision,

which is about 10 days from now when they play their rivalry game, the Egg Bowl against Mississippi State. About an hour ago, Kiffin went on the Pat McAbee show and basically debunked the entire latter narrative. Yeah, that's absolutely not true. There's been no ultimate, anything like that at all. And so I don't know where that came from, like a lot of stuff that comes out there. Like I said, man, we're having a blast. I love it here.

I mean, a running back sitting right over here. Come on over. And it just couldn't be better. Like I said, you pray for things. Our fans prayed for this type of thing. And now we're in the middle of it. So enjoy it. You're 10 and 1.

You're getting ready. You've got to buy week. You watch half the country lose. there's no way we can lose Saturday. And then you play the egg bowl and go dominate that and keep that egg bowl trophy home where it's been for a long time. It's incredible. Let me give you guys a quick salute before we ask.

Pete, let me start with you. I hate using this word because it's so overwrought. But this does seem like a fluid situation. Kind of take us through what might we be thinking about and looking for as this thing develops. Well, with Old Miss on a buy, it's clear that old. Ole Miss officials want some clarity from Lane Kiffin on his future. He has on his desk, metaphorically, a contract that will make him amongst the highest paid coaches in college football.

And credit Old Miss throughout Lane Kiffin's tenure there, they have been ahead of the curve on paying him and keeping him and ahead of the curve on NIL, which is how they've had these great rosters in back-to-back years. There is one clean option for Lane Kiffin and his future, and that would be signing a deal and staying at Old Miss. any other options are going to be thorny. It's becoming apparent that the notion of him taking another job and coaching in the playoff would be a tremendous high wire act to walk all the way out until December 19th.

So if we don't get this clean option here in the near future, whether there's a deadline this weekend or next week or whatever it is, once we'd get past the Egg Bowl and those other options become looming, it will be a thorny, thorny highwire act for Lane Kiffin. Oh, there's no question about that because if you look at this from Old Miss's perspective, they have a responsibility and a duty to be able to have some answers in place quickly. As you reference, you got National Signing Day coming up, then you come back after championship weekend the entire month of December is a dead period. And then you come off of the college football playoff and now you have your one-time transfer portal period. So Ole Miss wants to be sure that they aren't behind the eight ball and can hit the ground running. and the sooner they know what's going to happen with their current coach, Lane Kiffin, then they can start making some moves.

And of course, behind the scenes, you know they're already coming up with contingency plans. But the calendar right now, as it relates to college football, is not ideal the longer this goes on. As Pete put it, you want to be able to have a clean knowledge of what's going on. It gets muddier the longer it goes. But the truth is that there is a reason why we haven't seen a report why Lane Kiffin has signed a contract. extension. Maybe it's because of money, but I doubt that. Maybe he is still looking at some of these other places. And maybe it's a school like LSU, who knows what it is. But there's been a lot of coaches that have had this conversation of, hey, man, there's an opening here and

an opening there. And all of a sudden, they get and they sign that extension, whether it be a guy like Red Lashley or Matt Rule. Some of these names that have popped up, they have signed. Lane Kiffin still hasn't. Until he does, his name not only will continue to be floating around out there, but there'll be people continue to think that, oh, yeah, he's ready to leave to a better opportunity. Yeah, last thing I would say Ole Miss athletic director, Keith Carter, was under a lot of pressure here. Did say back in October, essentially, we are ready to give him a Signetti type of deal if he wants it. Carter played basketball at Ole Miss. He's a very passionate Ole Miss supporter, put the uniform on, and now he's got the biggest test of his life,

only won't be in the court. It's going to be trying to hammer out a deal with the toughest opponent in all of college sports. Pete, you know this man's name. I believe his name is Jimmy Sexton. Still to come here on college football live. An underperforming season for Texas says everybody. But Sark says, not so fast. I see this way differently than everyone else. What in the world is he talking about? That's next. Get no frills delivered. Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PC Express Pass. your first year for $2.50 a month.

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Yes, so you don't have to hear another no. What will you do with your yes? Get the yes you've been waiting for at Capital One.ca slash yes. Terms and conditions apply. We're back on college football live. Again, it appears Texas is not back. Throttled Saturday between the hedges, an absolute meat grinder in the fourth quarter as Georgia just wore down the horn, scoring 21 unanswered in route to an easy victory.

It's their third loss of the season. Let's take a look at the tail of the tape through 10 games last season. They're sitting there at 9 and 1 cruising towards the playoff. This year, cruising towards the playoff, anything but sitting there with seven wins and three losses. And their offense and offensive numbers way, way down. Steve Sarkesian was asked earlier this week if this season, frankly, has been a letdown. Steve, what would you say the main reasons are this team is? achieved. According to who? Well, even your preseason number one, I think most people would

agree three losses. It's not achieving what you are capable. I mean, I guess that's into who voted us number one. Okay. What I think is that this team has competed their tail off. They've been faced with a lot of different adversity and injuries and a lot of stuff has come across this team's plate. I'm very proud of them with their resiliency. At the end of the day, at the University of Texas, we're held to a very high standard. And the standard is to compete for championships year in and year out. And we're going to play the best teams in the country. We're going to schedule the best teams in the country. But by the end of the season, we'll play of our 12 regular season opponents, five of those teams will be top 10 teams when we played

them. So nearly half our schedule. And we have an opportunity at the end of the regular season to do something that nobody's done since 2019. And that's beat three top 10 ranked teams in the regular season. Last team to do that was LSU with Joe Burrow. So have we been faced with a pretty difficult schedule? Have we been faced with high expectations? Sure, but that's why we came here. So we'll be okay. Interesting. All right, Sam, let's start with you. You put on the burn orange. You walked on the 40 acres. Are you buying what he just said? I actually am buying what he said, but the reason why I'm buying it is because what hasn't happened yet. Right now, Texas hasn't performed up to their standard.

It's clear. But the question and one thing that Sarkesian did say in the interview was that the last two games matter. They play a two-game season. We've been talking all week about, man, what happens if Texas loses to Georgia? Are they out of the playoff completely? And the answer, technically is no, because if they beat Arkansas,

then go and beat and at the end of the season, they still would have an opportunity. And so all of what we've seen this season, the good and the bad, can be erased by how you finish. But that game versus Georgia was an underperformance. I I would argue the game versus Ohio State wasn't the best performance. Even there were some wins that weren't as impressive as you would have expected.

So, no, Texas has not performed up to what the expectation was, but it's not finished yet in this season and this team will be defined by how they finish these last two games. Well, and Sam, you're right, in these last two games include, you know, another top 10 opponent, which would give them three wins versus top 10 opponents if they were to pull that off. Listen, I think when you look at the expectations, we know what the standard is, and this program's come a long way under Steve Sarkeesian. It's easy to forget where it was when he took it over. But when you come into the season and you have a preseason AP poll, right, the expectation is that Archmanning is going to play like a redshirt senior. The expectation is that you are not going to be hit with deficiencies or youth in the offensive line that you're going to play out of sight. All right? The expectation is that you're not going to have injuries at the running back position.

Well, guess what? None of those things happened. So there's some growth, there's some immaturity, and some things haven't gone their way. I think they still got a great core nucleus. I think their best football is in front of them. The quarterback's only going to get better. Has it been disappointing? Absolutely.

Is Sark disappointed? Is he frustrated? Absolutely he is. But I agree 100% with what he said. I agree with you on it, Sam. Let's see how this thing plays out over the last two weeks. If we've learned one thing about college football, it's been chaotic just about each and every weekend with somebody. Who's that somebody going to be in the next couple of weeks?

I will say this, though, Lug, you talked about the expectation, the expectation. The expectation also wasn't that Texas would lose 3510 to Georgia. That wasn't the expectation, nor that Texas would lose 21, 29 to Florida. Those weren't the expectations for this team's season, regardless who was at running back, who was that quarterback, who was injured, who was not. So I understand injuries. That's part of football. Every team has injuries. I understand, okay, you might not have the strengths that you thought at different positions.

I would argue that a coach needs to either develop better or recruit better. And so I understand that the expectation should not have, maybe not should not have been, but you could argue that it's not fair to have the number one ranking. But that is the mantle that you hold when you are a team like the University of Texas that has gone to back-to-back college football playoffs. So the expectation may not have been as high, but it definitely was at least not for me. And a lot of people who support Texas or watch Texas isn't as low as losing 3510 to Georgia and also having three losses at this point in the season and playing the way that the team has played.

Yeah, so the three losses is where I want to go with our playoff insider, Heather Dinnich, who now joins us. Heather, I'm just looking at the playoff rankings here. Take a look at this. I'm just looking at it. The highest ranked last week, so Texas is sitting there at 10 in last week's rankings. As I scan down, the highest ranked three lost team according to the committee, and this is Apples to Orange's, is Iowa at 21.

That's the highest ranked three loss. team with Texas sitting there with three losses tonight having had a chance to look over everything over the weekend the way you do where do we expect the committee to maybe slot them tonight zoom and I dropped them to 15th in my projection behind Miami because remember Miami beat Florida Texas did not Miami also has fewer losses I think where they are depends on Sam we heard him talk about the opportunities that are still ahead. And yes, if they beat Texas A&M in the regular season finale, they'll have one of the

best wins in the country. But where they are tonight indicates they need to do that and how much help do they also need? Because remember, if they are around 15, they've got to get to 10 to be safe and not get knocked out during the seating process. And Heather, I just got a quick question if we got a second is, okay, you slide of them at 15, but how will the committee view a, a 25-point loss to Georgia.

Will they see them as 15 or maybe even lower beyond teams like Georgia Tech and other teams that could be in front of them? Well, how they lost definitely matters, but I still think that the committee will use Vanderbilt and that head-to-head as sort of a safety net for them. So I would still expect them to not fall below Vandy, even though they do have one more loss than the Commodores.

And keeping for purposes of context last week, Vandy was 14. Heather's got Texas at 15 because you kind of see that proximity there that she's talking about. Playoff rankings tonight right around 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time. More on that in just a little bit. It's time for our Capital One. Rewarding performance. And I don't know who deserves this more than Texas A&M completing the largest comeback in school history. They were down 27 points. They were down 30 to 3 at the half at home. And in basically one quarter wiped it all out and rallied for the win. On the way, two lost teams. There are many in the SEC, many in the Big Ten, many in the Big 12.

How should they all be feeling tonight? Heather back with the guys to discuss that as the committee will weigh in at 8.30 Eastern tonight. Talk about stepping up. It's time to level up your game. Introducing the all-new ESPN app. All of ESPN, all in one place. You're home for the most live sports and the best championship moments. The electricity is palpable.

Step up your game with no annual contract required. It's the ultimate fan experience. Level up for more on the ESPN app or at stream.esPN.com. Sign up now. In between both games, the college football playoff rankings will be revealed. Three weeks until Selection Day, let's run through yet another crazy weekend, and then let's hone in on the two lost teams. Georgia Tech averted a near disaster.

Boston College played them type. In fact, Tech had a double-digit fourth quarter deficit before rallying to win in Chestnut Hill. What a win for Oklahoma, a statement win. And of course, this begs the question, where will two loss alibi? Alabama end up again. We'll talk about many of the two lost teams here in a moment. Notre Dame, of course, is among those two lost teams. This is Jeremiah, who, well, 56 yard spin cycle to the house. And this game was basically over at the half. Let's take a look at the top two lost teams that I'm sure are going to be a part of this discussion with Alabama, Notre Dame, and Oklahoma with the latter two winning this weekend. All right, Heather, I want to start with you. There are a possibility of six SEC teams finishing with. two losses. Five big 10 teams could finish with two losses and four big 12 teams could finish with two losses for the purpose of this discussion. We're going to exclude Houston because they're the only team in that entire group that really hasn't made it into the rankings in any real

certifiable way. So help me understand with all the two lost teams playoff dreaming what we should be looking for tonight. We should be looking for Oklahoma and Alabama as a package deal. either above or below Notre Dame. And I projected this week that they would be above Notre Dame, which would push the Irish down to the 10th spot. And that's because when you look at both Oklahoma and Alabama, they have better strength of schedule

and strength of record than the Irish do right now. And Oklahoma now has three CFP top 25 wins, including back to back on the road against Alabama and Tennessee. I'm curious to see, if Missou is actually ranked in the CFP Top 25 against night because then Alabama has wins against Missou and Vandy. And oh, by the way, what should be a top four win tonight against Georgia?

They went on that four-game winning streak that really impressed people inside that selection committee meeting room. So I would be surprised if the committee split Alabama and Oklahoma up because of the schedule strength. I love that perspective, Heather, about the package deal because there are certain teams that are going to be attached at the hip, like Alabama and Oklahoma, but also I think about teams like Notre Dame and Miami, two lost teams who play one another, who were a little bit separate in the rankings.

Notre Dame just played Pitt, and they beat him 37 to 15. Miami plays Pitt, I believe it's this weekend. Actually, know what's in two weeks. I think that's going to be another thing where if both teams end up at 10 and 2, I think that's when that tiebreaker comes back into play, because as of now, both teams have similar resumes-ish, but that head-to-head, I think, will come into play because they both would have beat some of the same teams in similar fashions.

Well, it's going to be interesting, too, Sam, to see what type of weight they placed on that head-to-head because oftentimes when you play a first game of the season type of scenario, maybe one or both of the teams hasn't found their way yet. That's not how that Notre Dame and Miami game played out. Both of those teams were ready to go, played a hard-fought battle in week one.

It was a heck of a football game. And so I think that you're going to put the committee in a position to have to tell America either either head-to-head matters or it doesn't. Now, the other thing in this scenario is the Big 12. What happens in the Big 12 if we're sitting there and let's just say BYU and Texas Tech play in the Big 12 and BYU to win that game? What does the committee do with Texas Tech? Because a year ago, the same thing happened in the ACC and SMU stayed in the field. Louise, I'm so curious about Miami tonight because I do have them ahead of Texas, but I have them behind USC.

You know, USC lost Notre Dame, Miami beat Notre Dame. Maybe I made a mistake there, but the committee's been looking for consistency out of Keynes. They've shown it each of the last two weeks. I do think you're right that if they continue to win, that head-to-head will come back into the conversation. So watch tonight how much. Miami, if at all, has closed the gap with Notre Dame.

All right, Heather, one for you here. In the first committee rankings, there was an eight spot differential between Notre Dame and Miami. Last week, it shrunk to six from 15 to nine. Any kind of guess on what we might see this week, considering what both of these teams did over the weekend? I thought they both looked super impressive. With Miami and Notre Dame, my guess is about four spots this week. It could be three if they put the canes over USC. But that's going to settle itself out because USC has to play Oregon.

That's right. That's the big game coming up this Saturday. By the way, USC Oregon this week meeting as both ranked opponents for the first time in a decade. That kind of shows you where USC has been over the last 10 years. Again, college basketball champions classic tonight at Madison Square Garden, 630 tip. As soon as the first game is over, the playoff selection. Reveal number three is up right around 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time. We'll find out tonight.

We'll see tomorrow.