CBS Sports 136: Texas Tech leapfrogs Ole Miss, joins top five in college football rankings

With just a couple weeks left in the 2025 regular season, the time for moving and shaking in the college football rankings is starting to wane. For voters like us in the CBS Sports 136, a comprehensive ranking of every FBS team, late-season results serve to enforce strong resumes and reveal cracks in the facade. You are what your record says you are, as the saying goes, but the impact of these high-stakes games is felt in the updated college football rankings. 

The shifting winds of support throughout the rankings can occur in different forms. There was, of course, a rankings response to Georgia's impressive win against Texas and Oklahoma's stunning upset of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. But our voters also saw reasons to make some changes in the top five as Texas Tech drubbed UCF and Ole Miss struggled with Florida. The Red Raiders jumped ahead of the Rebels in the rankings, taking advantage of Alabama's loss to join the top five while Ole Miss found itself one spot down from last week, now at No. 7. 

The voters also had an interesting response to Alabama's drop, as the Crimson Tide landed at No. 9, one spot ahead of the Oklahoma team it just failed to beat. If this were one person's ballot or rankings, there could be some fair criticism for having one 8-2 team ahead of another 8-2 team when a recent head-to-head result points to a different order. But that's not the case here, as the CBS Sports 136 is made up of ballots from experts across the CBS Sports and 247Sports landscape. So let's go under the hood. 

• Alabama Average Voter Ranking (Nov. 16): 9.2 
• Oklahoma Average Voter Ranking (Nov. 16): 9.8 

Both of these teams carry a top-10 average on our ballots, but those averages suggest a varying view on where they fall in a complicated group of two-loss resumes between No. 8 and No. 12. Voters who favor Alabama clearly still want to give the Tide credit for the win against Georgia and possibly have excused the season-opening loss to Florida State. Voters who favor Oklahoma are looking at the wins against Alabama, Tennessee and Michigan and seeking to reward a Sooners group that's been playing high-level football since the loss to Texas in early October. 

Further down in the rankings, there is some more dramatic shakeups in terms of the number of spots gained and lost after Week 12 results. For more on those, check out the Mover's Report below the top 25 table. 

College football experts from CBS Sports and 247Sports contribute ballots each week, which are averaged together for our rankings. You can see the top 25 below and 26-136 on our rankings page.

Biggest movers 

• No. 44 East Carolina (+13): The Pirates joined the American title race with a thrilling win against Memphis that included a game-winning touchdown pass in the final minutes. The thrill of the victory certainly got the voters' attention, and they noticed this team has won seven of nine since the season-opening loss to NC State, and those two defeats have come to teams that our voters have ranked inside the top 30 (BYU, Tulane). 
• No. 27 Arizona (+10): The Wildcats were vaulted up into the top 30 after going into Cincinnati as a touchdown underdog and emerging with a 30-24 win. Brent Brennan's crew stumbled out of the gate with a 1-3 start to Big 12 play (the win against Kansas State was a non-conference game), but now after three-straight wins, it looks like Arizona is playing some of its best football at the end of the season. 
• No. 31 Navy (+10): The Midshipmen had a great bounce back from losses at North Texas and Notre Dame, handing South Florida a 41-38 loss that has launched Navy to the top of the standings in the American. The resume was lacking for high-end wins to back up an impressive record, and now at 8-2 with the victory against the Bulls there is motivation and reason for a big rise in the rankings. 
• No. 42 Memphis (-10): The Tigers have now dropped 20 spots across the last two weeks as a result of back-to-back losses to Tulane and ECU. It's an 8-3 team with a power conference win (against Arkansas), so the season-long resume should hold up for a top-50 finish, but right now our voters are following the recent trends when it comes to comparing Memphis against other comparable teams. 
• No. 30 Cincinnati (-11): The Bearcats have dropped back-to-back games, and though the first defeat at Utah did not come with much of a penalty from the voters due to the opponent and location, that's not the case after a home loss to Arizona. Cincinnati battled and lost close, certainly not out-classed, but with a 7-3 record and Iowa State as the best win, it's hard to win those tiebreaker debates inside the top 30. 
• No. 37 South Florida (-13): This is a steep drop for a South Florida team our voters have shown favor to throughout the season, but it's been more than a month since the Bulls have defeated a team who currently has a winning record. Close losses at Memphis and Navy have hurt USF's overall outlook, and here it's led to big slip outside of the top 30.   
• No. 35 Louisville (-14): Sloppy play in a disappointing home loss to Clemson has moved Louisville down again, marking a 21-spot drop over the last two weeks because of losses to Cal and the Tigers. It was not long ago Louisville had wins over Miami and James Madison and a path to the ACC title, but now two games out of first place with one conference game left -- officially eliminated from conference championship contention. 

Check out the rest of the CBS Sports 136: Teams ranked 26-136