College football midseason pulse: Biggest surprises, disappointments so far

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Three teams that started the season in the top four of the AP Top 25 Poll have spent time outside the rankings this season. One just fired its head coach.

College football is ever-changing, on and off the field. Now that it’s midseason, there’s an opportunity to come up for air and take stock of the sport’s biggest surprises and disappointments in 2025.

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TEAMS THAT HAVE SURPRISED

Indiana (6-0, 3-0 Big Ten)

The Hoosiers were a good story last year. Now they’re just a darn good team. The soft schedule talk that dominated discussion in the first year of the Curt Cignetti era can be thrown out the window. Indiana has beaten two top-10 opponents in six games. The Hoosiers bodyslammed then-No. 9 Illinois and, most recently, went into a hostile Autzen Stadium, ended the sport’s longest active home win streak and handed then-No. 3 Oregon its first regular-season loss since Oct. 14, 2023. Fernando Mendoza has filled Kurtis Rourke’s shoes beautifully, and Indiana’s defense is legit. The Hoosiers are eighth nationally in yards per play allowed.

Virginia (5-1, 3-0 ACC)

Tony Elliott won a total of 11 games in his first three years as UVA’s head coach. There’s a path for the Cavaliers to match that number this year, even in the regular season. The offense is fun, 43 points per game kind of fun. Throwing passes at his fourth school in six seasons, Chandler Morris is posting a 69.9% completion rate. North Carolina Central transfer J’Mari Taylor spearheads a UVA rushing attack responsible for 18 touchdowns, the third most any ACC team has scored on the ground this season. Oh, and the Cavaliers’ Week 2 loss to NC State went down as a non-conference game, so they’re technically perfect in league play.

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Cincinnati (5-1, 3-0 Big 12)

This is a make-or-break season for Scott Satterfield. So far, so good for the third-year Bearcats head coach who’s on the brink of his first bowl appearance since 2021 when he was at Louisville. Cincinnati is ranked for the first time since it joined the Big 12, and it’s suddenly a sneaky contender for the conference title. Brendan Sorsby is a quarterback to know. He’s 15th nationally in total yards per game. Sorsby has thrown for at least 250 yards in three games and rushed for 50-plus yards in three games. He did both in one of those. Cincinnati’s defense hasn’t been good against the pass, yet it’s among the best in the Big 12 in the red zone.

USF (5-1, 2-0 American)

The Bulls are riding the momentum they generated in a season-opening blowout of a Boise State team that was ranked No. 25 and that, according to ESPN, came out of the spring returning 67% of its production from last season’s CFP squad. USF then knocked off Florida in the Swamp, where the Gators later took down Texas. While the Bulls were slowed by a lopsided defeat to Miami, they’ve averaged 60 points in their three games since. USF has toyed with turnovers of late, though. It’s combined for seven giveaways in its past two outings. Then again, the Bulls created nine takeaways in that span.

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Vanderbilt (5-1, 1-1 SEC)

Similar to Indiana, Vanderbilt is a team that turned unexpected 2024 success into more magic in 2025. The Commodores didn’t make the CFP last season like the Hoosiers, although they did enjoy a winning record for the first time since 2013. Diego Pavia picked up where he left off and is a Heisman hopeful with 16 total touchdowns through six games, during which he’s completed a career-high 71.4% of his passes. A sign of any good team, the Commodores haven’t just beaten inferior opponents, they’ve buried them. Now Vandy’s running a gauntlet of four straight top-25 opponents. That said, the Commodores are in the top 25, too.

TEAMS THAT HAVE DISAPPOINTED

Penn State (3-3, 0-3 Big Ten)

The Nittany Lions were picked by many to win it all this year. Six games into the season, they’re swallowing the second-biggest buyout in the history of college football. James Franklin is gone after three straight losses, each worse than the last. Drew Allar had the potential to solidify himself as a first-round draft prospect. He didn’t look the part before he suffered his season-ending injury. Jim Knowles was brought in from Ohio State to take the Penn State defense to national championship level. It has regressed. Nothing has gone according to plan for a team built with key players who made the CFP last season and put the NFL on pause to run it back.

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Clemson (3-3, 2-2 ACC)

It felt like the pieces were in place for Clemson to return to national title contention. The Tigers came into the season with an NFL-themed defensive line and a quarterback who had Heisman buzz, plus his top-three receivers from the year before. And yet, Clemson faceplanted into its worst start since 2004. Dabo Swinney dug the Tigers out of a three-loss hole last year, but two of those defeats came against non-conference opponents. Cade Klubnik won’t roll over, and neither will Swinney, but a second straight redemptive CFP bid is unlikely for a Clemson program that no longer runs the ACC.

Texas (4-2, 1-1 SEC)

The Texas-sized expectations facing Arch Manning this season come with the name on the back of his jersey. They also come with playing for a powerhouse that was a play or two away from reaching the national title game each of the past two seasons. Manning didn’t live up to the hype the first five games of the season. His turnover-free performance against Oklahoma, including his 77.8% completion rate, offers serious encouragement, but his Heisman campaign never got off the ground and the preseason No. 1 Longhorns have been a mess up front. They’re also averaging the 15th-most penalties per game.

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Kansas State (3-4, 2-2 Big 12)

Kansas State is finally headed in the right direction. A run game, hindered by limited offensive line push most of last month, has improved. And a defense that’s still bottom four in the Big 12 in points per game — and middle of the pack in PFF tackling grades — scored two defensive touchdowns in a win over TCU on Saturday. But a nightmare August that began in Ireland, followed by a head-scratching September that featured a home loss to Army effectively removed K-State from CFP contention.

South Carolina (3-3, 1-3 SEC)

Like the rest of the teams on this list, South Carolina has a quarterback that hasn’t taken the step forward he was expected to take. LaNorris Sellers has netted just 117 rushing yards this season, in large part because he’s been sacked 19 times. On one hand, the Gamecocks’ offensive line is snakebitten by injury and struggling to protect Sellers. On the other hand, Sellers has held onto the ball too long, recording an average time to throw on all dropbacks of 3.36 seconds, the longest among FBS quarterbacks with at least 100 dropbacks this season, per PFF. The Gamecocks already have three losses, and their next four games are against top-15 teams.

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