Ranking the 12 People Feeling the Most Pressure in the College Football Playoff

Postseason play in every sport is a pressure cooker. As the stakes rise, so does the temperature on the key participants. In college football, where the emotions tend to run hottest, the 12-team playoff offers expanded opportunity for glory—and failure.

It’s a bigger griddle, capable of cooking more coaches and players.

Here’s a pressure check on the dozen people who really need good things to happen during this College Football Playoff:

1. Pete Golding, Mississippi coach

He got a battlefield promotion of sorts, promoted into a high-level SEC job without a coaching search that extended past athletic director Keith Carter getting in a golf cart and driving to the football facility. His first game as a head coach will be in a win-or-else setting. He’s replacing a man who wanted to coach the Rebels in the playoff, and who was the object of an intense hiring battle between LSU, Florida and Florida State. He’s playing a team (Tulane) that Ole Miss beat by 35 points three months ago, when He Who Shall Not Be Named was in charge. His team is favored by a fat 17.5 points.

If Golding and Ole Miss lose? Lord help him. Fan psychology being what it is, most of the faithful will cope by hating Lane Kiffin harder. They’ll chalk it up to Kiffin ruining the most promising season in six decades at Ole Miss. But once the rage subsides, the fans would also wonder whether they got the right guy in a whirlwind rebound marriage after a bitter divorce—or whether the school hired the next Matt Luke.

2. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama coach

His team backpedaled into the playoff, the object of scorn in South Bend and suspicion of SEC/ESPN favoritism elsewhere. Speculation flared up immediately after Sherrone Moore’s firing that DeBoer was a candidate at Michigan, and has only kinda-sorta died down. Alabama is favored on the road against a team it lost to at home five weeks ago. If the Crimson Tide loses to Oklahoma on Friday and drops DeBoer to 19–8 as the successor to Saban Almighty, plenty of fans would be willing to help him pack for Ann Arbor, Mich.

3. Curt Cignetti and Fernando Mendoza, Indiana coach and quarterback

Cig has backed up every boast he’s made over the miraculous last two years, but now the landscape changes. It’s time to go from delightfully fresh overachiever to No. 1 seed wearing a target—and it’s time for Mendoza to perform as a Heisman Trophy winner who is chasing a national championship. The giddiness of reaching 13–0 and winning the Big Ten championship in the friendly confines of Indianapolis will evaporate quickly if the Hoosiers are one-and-done in the Rose Bowl.

4. Everyone associated with Tulane and James Madison

They are carrying the Group of 6 conference banner, to the dislike of the elitists who would rather turn the playoff into a power-conference invitational. That includes Nick Saban himself, who trashed half of FBS on The Pat McAfee Show on Thursday:

“Would we allow the winner of the AAA baseball league—the International League, I don’t even know the name of it—would you let them in the World Series?” Saban said. “That’s the equivalent of what we do when JMU gets in the playoff and Notre Dame doesn’t. These guys ought to have their own playoff. ... Just give them the money. Each school gets $4 million for playing the first round. Just give them $4 million and put Notre Dame in. Want to see Notre Dame and Oregon play? Hell, yes. Hell, yes.”

College football might be the only sport that actively hates Cinderella. The deck is already stacked against the James Madisons of the world, but the exclusionary rhetoric will only intensify if the Green Wave are blown out by Ole Miss and the Dukes are blown out by Oregon. It would be a gaslighting that overlooks the reality that blowouts happen in every sport in the opening rounds, including SEC heavyweight Tennessee being beaten senseless in last year’s playoff by Ohio State (it was 21–0 in less than 12 minutes).

For the sake of the schools the establishment already wants to go away, Tulane and JMU need to show up Saturday.

5. Jim Phillips, ACC commissioner

The league could use a positive football headline or two. A faulty tiebreaker kept the best team (Miami) out of the league championship game, which was won by 8–5 Duke—and the Blue Devils were then excluded from the playoff bracket. The Hurricanes made the field, but that was a controversial inclusion that ratchets up the first-round performance pressure. A Miami victory would change the ACC narrative, and also change the subject from a 2026 league schedule that was widely mocked upon its unveiling earlier this week.

6. Mario Cristobal and Carson Beck, Miami coach and quarterback

If Phillips is on the griddle from a big-picture perspective, Cristobal and Beck are feeling it at the local level in South Florida. Cristobal was a big-swing hire from Oregon who came back to restore his alma mater, and getting to the playoff is the first significant step—but doing something in the playoff would really resonate. His in-game coaching will be heavily scrutinized against Texas A&M on Saturday, as will the play of Beck, a high-dollar acquisition from Georgia. Can the inconsistent fifth-year senior rekindle his NFL draft stock?

7. Dan Lanning, Oregon coach

Remember last year? The Ducks were in Indiana’s role—the only undefeated team, ranked No. 1 and playing in the Rose Bowl. Then Ohio State beat Oregon even worse than it beat Tennessee, blazing to a 34–0 lead in the first half. The Buckeyes were rolling toward a national championship, but that still was an embarrassing face-plant by the Ducks to finish a great season. They open with an easier opponent this season, but the injury report raises questions about Oregon’s receiving corps. A first-round loss would be a massive pratfall, and even a quarterfinal loss to Texas Tech would be viewed negatively in some quarters.

8. Cody Campbell, Texas Tech regent and donor

The most prominent money man behind the Red Raiders’ roster upgrades has seen a lot of return on investment in this 12–1 season—but now it’s time for it to translate beyond the one-bid Big 12 and an extremely weak nonconference schedule. The playoff No. 4 seed will await the winner of James Madison vs. Oregon in the Orange Bowl, in what will be the biggest game in Tech history. The defense is outrageous; is the offense good enough?

9. Mike Elko, Texas A&M coach

He’s got the angst-ridden Aggies where they’ve long dreamed of being—in the playoff, in competition for a national title, and Texas is nowhere to be found in the bracket. But A&M also finished the season in suspect fashion, barely getting by South Carolina and then being walloped in the second half by the Longhorns—a result that dropped the Aggies out of the SEC championship game and all the way to No. 7 in the playoff rankings. That means a home game against dangerous Miami. The pressure goes both ways in that game.

10. Greg Sankey, SEC commissioner

He got a nation-leading five teams in the tournament, a season after being highly displeased at getting in just three. Those five need to make some hay to restore the SEC’s long-held primacy. The league has watched the Big Ten win the last two national titles while not placing a team in either championship game. If it Just Means More, then more must be delivered.

11. Tony Petitti, Big Ten commissioner

The guy who likes college sports less than any other commissioner has to love where his league is situated—the Big Ten has won two straight titles and has the top two seeds this time around, and three of the top five. It would be a spectacular boost to the conference’s suspect depth if the Hoosiers or Oregon follow Michigan’s championship in 2023 and Ohio State in ’24. But, hey, they wouldn’t complain if the Buckeyes go back-to-back, either. If none of the three wins, that’s a missed opportunity.

12. Julian Sayin, Ohio State quarterback

He had a sensational season as a first-year starter, leading the nation in pass efficiency to this point and becoming a Heisman finalist. But he wasn’t great in the Big Ten title game against a very good Indiana defense, and the Buckeyes offense scored only 37 points in its last two games combined—the program’s fewest since the final two contests of the 2023 season. Armed with elite receivers, can Sayin get cranked back up and have a Will Howard–esque playoff run that ends in a national title?