Following Week 14 of the 2025 College Football season, the Vanderbilt Commodores are on the fringe of the CFB Playoff field. Can they make it into the 12-team bracket and compete for a National Championship?
With the use of PFSN’s College Football Playoff Meter and the College Football Playoff Predictor, let’s examine Vanderbilt’s chances of playing in the CFB Playoff.
What are Vanderbilt’s CFB Playoff Chances?
The PFSN College FPM gives Vanderbilt a 5.0% chance of making the College Football Playoff. Vanderbilt is currently ranked 14th in the CFP Selection Committee rankings, sitting at 10-2 overall and 6-2 in conference play.
The Commodores and Diego Pavia have three projected automatic bids ranked ahead of them — from the Big Ten, SEC, and Big 12, respectively — and would also be further displaced by automatic bids from the chaotic ACC and the Group of Six.
Past the five automatic bids, only seven At-Large teams make the CFB Playoffs. Using current seeding and not conference championship winners for the moment, the current projected At-Large teams would be Indiana, Georgia, Oregon, Ole Miss, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, and Alabama.
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Vanderbilt is the sixth SEC team in the pecking order. Though they have a head-to-head loss against Texas — ranked just behind them at 16th — the Commodores have a superior resume with just two losses overall and no unranked conference losses.
Vanderbilt’s only losses have come at the hands of a tough Texas team and an Alabama team poised to make the CFB Playoffs either as an automatic bid or an At-Large team. Nevertheless, Vanderbilt still needed a bit of help to get into the big dance entering Week 14.
Beating Tennessee was obviously huge, not just for the scenarios we’re discussing here, but for the program as a whole. Perennially in the shadow of their in-state SEC rival, they have finally emerged as a legitimate program worthy of national attention.
That said, the biggest national stage of them all may have to wait. Vanderbilt really needed the following scenarios to play out to bolster their bid for the College Football Playoff:
- Vanderbilt beats Tennessee (Vanderbilt won)
- Auburn beats Alabama
- UCF beats BYU (BYU won)
- Kansas beats Utah (Utah won)
- Ohio State beats Michigan (Ohio State won)
- Texas A&M beats Texas (Texas won)
- LSU beats Oklahoma (Oklahoma won)
With most of the scenarios playing away from Vanderbilt’s favor, the chances of the ‘Dores making the playoff aren’t as a high as they could have been.
The committee is the ultimate variable, however, and they could view late-season Texas as a different team than the early-season Texas team that lost to Florida, and take that into consideration. And if it comes down to a head-to-head, Texas has the tiebreaker win over Vanderbilt to potentially steal their place.
The PFSN CFB FPM is not optimistic for Vanderbilt’s chances at securing a CFB Playoff bid.
Our simulations give Vanderbilt a 0.5% chance of playing in the CFP semifinals, a 0.2% chance of playing in the CFP National Championship Game, and a 0.1% chance of winning the CFP National Championship.