Both byes behind them, everything ahead of them: Hurricanes ready to make push
For the second time in the past three weekends, the Miami Hurricanes did not play a football game.
The Hurricanes’ schedule put their bye weeks on either end of their Oct. 4 road game against the Florida State Seminoles, giving them plenty of rest early in the season before what will now be a lengthy push to the finish.
Miami is set up nicely, with a 5-0 record, three ranked wins in its first handful of games, a No. 2 ranking in the AP top 25 poll and the toughest games on paper already played.
As the Hurricanes resume play, with at minimum seven games over the next seven weeks and then a hopeful extended postseason run after that, here’s a look at where things stand for UM.
The remaining schedule
The rest of the Hurricanes’ regular-season schedule is against ACC opponents, with four of the seven games at home and three on the road.
The full slate: home against Louisville on Friday, home against Stanford on Oct. 25, at SMU on Nov. 1, home against Syracuse on Nov. 8, home against N.C. State on Nov. 15, at Virginia Tech on Nov. 22 and at Pittsburgh on Nov. 29.
The Hurricanes are expected to be favored in all seven games.
From there, the ACC Championship Game is on Dec. 6 at Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium should Miami qualify.
After that, it’s the 12-team College Football Playoff.
The state of the ACC
Five teams remain undefeated in conference play. Georgia Tech, Virginia and Duke are 3-0 in league play, SMU is 2-0 and Miami is 1-0.
Interestingly not included in that group is Clemson, which was the preseason No. 4 team in the country and won the league eight of the past 10 seasons. The Tigers are 3-3 overall and 2-2 in league action.
Also not included are the Florida State Seminoles, who surprised to open the season with an upset win over the Alabama Crimson Tide but have fallen flat in league play with conference losses to Virginia, Miami and Pittsburgh.
While there are five teams undefeated in league play right now, there will be some matchups between those teams to narrow down the standings.
Georgia Tech plays Duke on Saturday. Miami plays SMU on Nov. 1. Virginia plays Duke on Nov. 15.
With that, there is a potential path in which Miami, Georgia Tech and Virginia all go 8-0 in conference play at which point tiebreakers will need to be used to determine which two teams advance to the ACC Championship Game in Charlotte.
The national landscape
The field competing to make the College Football Playoff is perhaps as wide open as it has ever been.
Through seven weeks, only eight Power 4 conference teams remain undefeated: Ohio State and Indiana in the Big Ten, Miami and Georgia Tech in the ACC, BYU and Texas Tech in the Big 12, and Ole Miss and Texas A&M in the SEC. Memphis and Navy of The American Conference and UNLV of the Mountain West Conference are also undefeated.
The five highest ranked conference champions will receive automatic bids into the playoffs, with the final seven spots being given to the next seven highest-ranked teams.
With its perfect record and three ranked wins, Miami’s resume is one of the best — if not the best — in college football thus far. The path to the postseason is pretty clear for the Hurricanes right now: Just keep winning and they won’t need to worry about outside help like they did last season when they dropped two of their final three regular-season games and didn’t have a strong enough schedule to soften the blow of the late losses.
This story was originally published October 12, 2025 at 12:22 PM.
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