Yahoo Sports’ college football predictions for the 2025 season: Who will win it all?

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The first full week of college football has arrived — and with it comes one of the most loaded slates of the season.

But before we get to Week 1, we have to prognosticate on how it’ll all play out this year. Will Arch Manning deliver on outsized expectations? Will Bill Belichick thrive in his first season as a college football coach? Who will be hoisting the national championship trophy in January?

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Our team of college football experts breaks it all down with their annual predictions, picking conference winners, title game matchups, surprises, disappointments and more.

Feel free to disagree, or to make your own picks in the comments below.

(Editor’s Note: All picks below were made before Week Zero.)

Here’s my biggest question of the season: Will the SEC return to dominance? The league didn’t have a team playing in the national championship game the last two years. That was the first such instance since 2004-05. The SEC had at least one team competing in the title game in 16 of 18 years, ending with that Michigan-Washington championship game in 2023. Can heavyweights Georgia, Texas, LSU and Alabama regain the conference’s place atop the sport? We may know a lot after Week 1. Alabama plays at FSU, Texas at Ohio State and LSU at Clemson.

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There are plenty more points of intrigue. What happens to Texas Tech, perhaps the biggest NIL spender of the offseason? The pressure’s on in Lubbock for a roster reported to be well over $20 million. North Carolina’s fate is of interest. Can Bill Belichick — offseason distractions and all — show that he can win in college like he did in the pros? And we can’t forget about Arch Manning, the kid with the famous family lineage leading top-ranked Texas into a season opener against Ohio State with a nearly entirely new offensive line and defensive front. Good luck, Arch!

Meanwhile, as the SEC and Big Ten continue to grab more decision-making power in the sport’s future, it’s up to the ACC and Big 12 to change the trajectory of the sport. Clemson, Miami, Florida State, Baylor, Tech, Colorado… can any of them squash the “Power Two” narrative by not just beating Big Ten and SEC teams during the regular season but advance deep into the College Football Playoff? The arc of the entire sport’s future could depend on it.

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Will Arch Manning’s first season as a starter end with something his uncles couldn’t do? Peyton lost the Orange Bowl in 1997 and the Vols finished the season 11-2. Ole Miss went 10-3 in Eli’s last season there, which included a win in the Cotton Bowl.

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I think Texas will again make a deep playoff run but will come up short again. Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has talked about his team being the first 16-0 program in college football history. The Tigers may not go undefeated, but they’re one of the best in college football and will not only take down LSU in Week 1, but they’ll beat the Longhorns in January for the national championship.

I think Utah takes down Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game as the conference is the most wide-open in the country again. The Utes just simply need competent quarterback play from Devon Dampier to be a playoff-caliber team.

The ACC has both my surprise team and my disappointing team. Virginia Tech may not beat South Carolina in Week 1, but the Hokies’ conference schedule lines up well to be near the top of the conference after a few down years. Conversely, Syracuse seems destined for a big drop-off from 2024 even if the team isn’t demonstrably worse than last year’s 10-3 version. The Orange have one of the toughest schedules in the country.

There hasn’t really been a season like this one where so many of the teams we expect to compete for a national championship have quarterbacks we haven’t seen play very much. Texas, Ohio State, Georgia, Oregon and Alabama are maybe five of the most talented eight or nine teams in the country, but we really just don’t know how they are going to function at the most important position on the field. And, yes, that includes Texas because Arch Manning — for all the hype and pedigree — hasn’t played a meaningful snap against a good team outside of special packages where he runs the ball in short yardage.

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Conversely, there are teams we know have good quarterbacks but plenty of other questions. You might trust Drew Allar’s experience, but can James Franklin actually win the big one? Cade Klubnik improved rapidly at the end of last season, but do we really think Clemson’s talent level is similar to that 2015-2019 run? LSU is going to score a lot of points with Garrett Nussmeier, but have they really fixed the defense? Does Miami have the discipline and coaching to lock in every week behind Carson Beck?

Because of those cross-currents with the top teams, I think it’s going to be a volatile season with 7-8 teams in the mix to win a national championship. In the end, whoever gets to the playoff with the healthiest roster and the quarterback who has improved the most from September to December will be in a great position.

In the broader politics of the sport, we’re going to see a lot of conversation around what future playoff models should look like with the Big Ten and SEC at odds over formats. Ultimately, I think they will fail to come to any agreement and the 12-team model will be in place for at least another year.

Picking the No. 1 preseason team to win the national championship might seem as chalk as it gets, but this is going to be anything but a routine season for Texas. A Week 1 loss to Ohio State and a November loss to Georgia aren’t reaches, but Texas will get better as the season goes on. The SEC will be a dogfight every weekend, the Big Ten will be one long put-up-or-shut-up quest for Penn State. Jeremiah Smith will break out of the Heisman pack thanks to a combination of name familiarity, voluminous numbers and good-but-not-great QB play.

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Auburn is going to get a couple big unexpected wins, and Miami is going to take some ugly unexpected losses, leading to some hard questions about paying rent-a-players such massive checks. And Bill Belichick will remain in the spotlight whether he wants to or not. Clemson will deliver on all its preseason hype, while LSU most definitely will not, leading to Brian Kelly/hot-seat talk dominating 2026. Ohio State, Georgia and Alabama will all deliver reliably strong seasons, but a well-honed Texas and a driven Penn State will outlast the competition.

Every college football season is a fireworks display, but this one’s going to be Grand Finale-level explosiveness from August to January.

I see Cade Klubnik building on his 43-touchdown junior season, and he’s got the supporting cast to win the ACC again, perhaps this time in more convincing fashion. The Big 12 is up for grabs, and who knows what we’ll get after last year, but my best guess is Kansas State — I’m riding with the dual-threat upside of Avery Johnson and an aggressive defense that can wreak enough havoc in a conference that’s piloted by offense anyway.

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Now let’s turn to the power conference winners I have playing for the national championship.

Penn State is trying to follow a similar blueprint as Ohio State, which followed a similar blueprint as Michigan (minus that whole sign-stealing scandal). It goes like this: Return a slew of NFL prospects who could have gone to the league, lean on a suffocating defense and pair it with a top-15 offense that pops with fireworks when it matters most. It’s resulted in back-to-back national championships for the Big Ten, and I’m predicting a third is on the way. Penn State poached former Buckeyes coordinator Jim Knowles to run a defense that brought back key players at every position from a unit that allowed 16.5 points per game last year. James Franklin still needs to beat the can’t-win-big-games allegations, and this year’s portal swing for wide receiver help needs to come through for quarterback Drew Allar, but Penn State’s preseason hype is justified.

As for my runner-up pick, Alabama’s due for a bounce back. Head coach Kalen DeBoer is reunited with his right-hand man, offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb. They’ve won a lot of games together over the years at Sioux Falls, Eastern Michigan, Fresno State and Washington. I don’t see the Crimson Tide offense vanishing down the stretch this year. They have an offensive line that could win the Joe Moore Award and clear the path to an SEC championship and a trip to the national title game.

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