UCLA’s perfect start has the Bruins sitting in a place they haven’t seen in a long time.
The first College Football Playoff rankings dropped Tuesday, and UCLA checked in at No. 8 - its highest spot in a dozen years. The Bruins are 8-0 overall and 5-0 in the Big Ten, and they’ve done it with a season that keeps getting harder to ignore.
Their remaining regular-season slate includes Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan and No. 18 USC before the final CFP rankings are unveiled on Sunday, Dec. 6, after conference championship weekend.
Head coach Bob Chesney didn’t waste time putting the moment in perspective.
“They understand what this is about right now,” Chesney said on Tuesday. “I told them the two most meaningless statistics in all of college sports are the score at halftime and your record going into November. November, obviously, is what matters.”
For UCLA, this is familiar territory in one sense and brand-new in another. The Bruins have never reached the CFP, but they’ve appeared in the rankings 17 times from 2014 through 2023, back when the playoff field was only four teams. Tuesday’s No. 8 slot matches their best ranking ever, the same position they held on Nov. 25, 2014, the CFP’s first year.
What’s driving the rise is a sharp turnaround under Chesney, who took over after Deshaun Foster and interim coach Tim Skipper before the season. UCLA is winning by an average of 20 points, a stunning swing after a year in which the Bruins won three games total. The offense has kept humming even after losing quarterback Nico Iamaleava after five games to an ACL tear.
The numbers tell the story. Senior running back Wayne Knight ranks third in the Big Ten with 85 rushing yards per game, and UCLA leads the conference with 219.50 rushing yards per game. The Bruins are also putting up 427.6 yards of total offense per game.
USC also landed in the opening rankings, coming in at No. 20 after a season that has put Lincoln Riley under the microscope.
The Trojans have been uneven. They lost to Oregon for the fifth straight time in late September, then nearly slipped against an unranked Washington team the next week.
A loss to unranked Wisconsin knocked them out of the AP Top 25, but last weekend’s upset of No. 11 Ohio State - which was No. 2 at the time - pushed them back into the rankings and almost certainly got the committee’s attention too.
“We’re very aware that we control our own destiny,” Riley said. “There’s no question about that.
We just need to keep focusing on us. We need to keep improving and playing good.
We’ve got several very high-quality wins already and there’s a lot of good football left to be played.”
USC has made 40 CFP ranking appearances, and the Trojans still have plenty in front of them: No. 6 Indiana, Maryland and No. 5 UCLA to close the regular season.
Their offense remains one of the Big Ten’s best through the air. USC ranks second in the conference in passing at 294.4 yards per game, powered by quarterback Jayden Maiava, who leads the Big Ten with 286.7 passing yards per game and has thrown 20 touchdowns.
At the top of the first rankings, undefeated Miami grabbed No. 1, followed by Georgia at No. 2, undefeated Utah at No. 3 and defending national champion Indiana at No. 4. Alabama, Kentucky, Texas, UCLA, BYU, Mississippi, Notre Dame and Ohio State rounded out the top 12.
The committee will update the rankings each week until Dec. 6.
The 12-team playoff opens with four campus games on Dec. 18-19 for seeds 5-8, while the top four teams receive byes into the quarterfinals. Those quarterfinal games are set for the Fiesta Bowl on Dec. 30 and the Peach Bowl, Cotton Bowl and Rose Bowl on Jan.
- The semifinals are scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 14 at the Orange Bowl in Miami and Friday, Jan. 15 at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, with the national title game set for Jan. 25 in Las Vegas.
The selection committee includes six current athletic directors, four former head coaches, two former All-American football players and one former sportswriter.
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