SALT LAKE CITY — The dream was tarnished but not completely ruined for BYU over the weekend.

The previously undefeated Cougars were outclassed against Texas Tech in a game BYU only managed 255 total yards of offense, including just 67 yards on the ground, and just one touchdown late in the game.

But a single loss does little to hurt BYU’s chances of a Big 12 title game berth or a potential College Football Playoff opportunity. It just leaves less margin for error for Kalani Sitake’s squad over the final three weeks of the regular season.

That loss, though, dropped the Cougars in the second iteration of the College Football Playoff rankings, which were released Tuesday night, dropping BYU from No. 7 to No. 12. It’s a spot now squarely on the bubble for BYU for potential inclusion in the 12-team playoff.

“We’ll circle the wagons, get back to work, and figure this thing out,” BYU coach Kalani Sitake said. “That’s the remedy. We’ve got to get back to work and figure this thing out.”

BYU is no longer the highest-ranked team from the Big 12, with Texas Tech claiming that spot in just the program’s second time ranked in the College Football Playoff rankings. The Red Raiders improved two spots to No. 6 and is the favorite to represent the conference in the playoff with the Big 12 bid.

Texas Tech and BYU are, once again, joined by Utah in the rankings from the Big 12 as the only teams from the conference ranked for a second week. Utah appeared at No. 13 in the initial playoff rankings last week — an outside shot at an at-large playoff bid — and stayed put on a bye week.

The Utes are favored in their final three games of the season by no less than 78.8% in each game, according to ESPN Analytics, and have 13th best odds to win a national championship — slightly higher than BYU.

Tuesday’s inclusion is the 46th week all-time for Utah in the College Football Playoff era rankings and the 19th week for BYU.

Also included from the Big 12 is Cincinnati, who was unranked last week. The Bearcats moved in at No. 25 to make it four teams from the Big 12 ranked this week. The top three from the Big 12 are all above the top of the ACC’s highest-ranked team, which is now Miami at No. 15.

The top of the College Football Playoff rankings stayed put for a second week, with Ohio State still ranked as the No. 1 team in the country, followed by Indiana, Texas A&M and Alabama as the first-round byes.

To view the full rankings see below, or click here.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.