Can Louisville make 2025 College Football Playoff after win at Miami?

College football fans didn’t even have to wait until Saturday for the first major upset of Week 8 of the 2025 season.

Thirteen days after a deflating overtime loss to No. 19 Virginia, Louisville went on the road and stunned No. 2 Miami 24-21 on Friday, Oct. 17, a game in which the Cardinals were nearly a two-touchdown underdog.

The victory further burnished Jeff Brohm’s reputation for wizardry in big games, with the third-year Louisville coach now 4-0 in regular-season games against top-five teams while with the Cardinals and at Purdue (his previous Power Four coaching job).

Friday’s win did more than just earn Louisville some across the college football world and a bronzed pair of Howard Schnellenberger’s cowboy boots. It kept its dreams of an ACC championship and a College Football Playoff appearance alive.

With the victory, the Cardinals improved to 5-1 and avoided what would have likely been a second loss that would have knocked them out of the playoff race. Given what Chris Bell, Miller Moss, T.J. Capers and company pulled off on a muggy Friday night in Miami Gardens, those hopes will live for at least another week.

Here’s a look at Louisville’s path to the playoff:

Can Louisville make 2025 College Football Playoff?

Absolutely.

The Miami win is one of the biggest victories in Louisville program history, which is saying quite a bit for a school that has won Fiesta, Orange and Sugar Bowls in the past 35 years. Entering Friday night, the Cardinals had been 1-8 all-time against teams ranked No. 1 or No. 2 at the time of the matchup.

The victory serves as the centerpiece for Louisville’s burgeoning College Football Playoff resume.

The Cardinals (5-1) have a handful of impressive wins. There’s Miami, of course, but Louisville also defeated James Madison, one of the top teams nationally outside the Power Four conferences, and picked up a comeback road win three weeks earlier against Pitt, which is 4-2 after beating Florida State last Saturday.

The sudden optimism around Louisville’s playoff candidacy isn’t just rooted in what it has done. It’s because of what lies ahead for it.

The Cardinals’ remaining schedule is manageable, as none of its final six regular-season games come against teams currently ranked in the US LBM Coaches Poll. The combined record of its six remaining opponents is a less-than-daunting 17-20.

Still, challenges await.

Louisville will have to go on the road to take on SMU, which is 4-2 and defeated the Cardinals last season on its way to the playoff. While Clemson, at 3-3, has been one of the biggest disappointments in the FBS this season, but the Tigers are still wildly talented and have been playing better of late, with two consecutive wins decided by a combined score of 79-20. Cal, at 5-2, has the best record of anyone Louisville has left on its regular-season slate and has one of the best young quarterbacks in the country in Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele. Kentucky’s only 2-3, but as the Cardinals learned two years ago, even a middling Wildcats squad can come into L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium and pull off an upset. And given how Brohm’s teams have fared in their games immediately after top-five upsets, even a home game next Saturday against a 1-5 Boston College team will cause some anxiety in and around Jefferson County.

For Louisville to make the playoff, it will almost have to certainly make the ACC Championship game. The race to get to Charlotte is crowded right now. The Cardinals are one of eight teams (in the 17-team league) with one or fewer losses in conference play, though they own potentially crucial tiebreakers over two of those teams by virtue of head-to-head wins — Miami and Pitt. Unfortunately for Louisville, Virginia’s also among that group.

Trying to guess what the conference standings might look like in six weeks is a fool’s errand, but after toppling the previously undefeated Hurricanes, Brohm’s team can at least still dream.

Here’s a look at Louisville’s 2025 results and remaining schedule: