The 2025 college football season will come with plenty of changes, including new Division I teams (welcome, Delaware and Missouri State), direct seeding in the College Football Playoff and fresh faces set to take the field for the first time. With so much change in place, chaos feels inevitable.
We asked our college football writers to answer one simple question as the 2025 college football season approaches:
What single “what if” could define this year’s college football season?
Laken Litman: What if Arch Manning doesn’t live up to the hype?
For as often as Arch Manning’s name has dominated college football headlines, there hasn’t been much discussion about who his backup will be this season. Manning, a former No. 1 overall recruit, has waited patiently for his turn to be the Texas starting quarterback. Before joining the team in 2023, Manning had never been a backup in his life. But Quinn Ewers had already solidified his place on Steve Sarkisian’s roster, and so for the past two seasons, Manning was used when needed. That ended up being more than some backups because Ewers suffered injuries the last two seasons, allowing Manning the opportunity to play and gain experience ahead of this monumental year.
The Longhorns were fortunate to have a backup like Manning when Ewers was unable to play. But what if Manning gets injured or isn’t the elite talent he’s expected to be this fall? Who will come in and lead the team? Expectations are astronomical this year. After going to back-to-back College Football Playoff semifinals, Texas is a favorite to win the national championship.
Manning doesn’t have the same caliber of backup that Ewers could lean on, but there are a few options: Troy transfer Matthew Caldwell (ranked No. 123 among all transfer QBs per 247Sports), redshirt freshman Trey Owens (former No. 16 overall QB in the 2024 class) and true freshman Karle Lacey Jr. (former four-star prospect).
While everyone is all in on Manning, it would be out of character for Sarkisian to not be properly developing the guys behind him. And most teams aren’t usually as lucky as Texas was the past two years having someone like Manning on call. But if QB1 is unable to play for whatever reason, the Horns could be in some trouble.
RJ Young: What if Penn State fails to beat Ohio State (again)?
James Franklin will have the core of his 2024 team ready and willing in 2025. Quarterback Drew Allar, running backs Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen and linebacker Dani Dennis-Sutton hope to lead the Nittany Lions back to the CFP after falling just seconds short of earning the chance to play for the national title.
A total of 15 starters return to Happy Valley with the help of a little NIL money, a change to the best defensive coordinator in the country in 2024 in Jim Knowles, and Andy Kotelnicki entering the year with talented wideouts on the perimeter.
That’s fine.
I can’t really take this team seriously to win a national title, though. Franklin is 0-7 against Ohio State and Michigan over the last four years and 1-15 against AP top-five opponents. You’ll see Penn State ranked No. 1 in plenty of preseason polls, but you won’t see an argument for this team being there outside of “they’re due.” So is the rent. One is getting paid this January come hell or high water.
And unlike Penn State, my checks don’t bounce.
Michael Cohen: What if the SEC fails to produce a national champion for the third straight year?
For most of the 21st century, the SEC has reigned supreme as the preeminent conference in college football. The league has produced 14 national champions over the last 25 years, including a remarkable run of seven straight from 2006-12 when Alabama (3x), Florida (2x), LSU and Auburn all finished atop the sport. It should be no surprise that the only back-to-back winners during this stretch — Alabama in 2011 and 2012; Georgia in 2021 and 2022 — both came from the SEC as well. And in the 10-year history of the College Football Playoff, which began with a four-team field in 2014 and expanded to 12 last fall, the SEC has nearly as many playoff victories (18) as the rest of the conferences combined (20). There’s a reason the league’s slogan is “It Just Means More,” especially when it comes to football.
But consecutive national championships for Michigan (2023) and Ohio State (2024), coupled with a changing landscape that legalized both revenue sharing and the weaponization of wealthy donors eager to assist with player compensation, has begun to level the playing field — at least for the time being. It’s a shift that has been reflected in the College Football Playoff, where the SEC was a bystander during the last two national championship games as Michigan (Big Ten) toppled Washington (Pac-12) and Ohio State (Big Ten) bested Notre Dame (Independent), and in the high school recruiting rankings, where only three of the top 10 classes in the 2026 cycle currently belong to SEC programs (Georgia at No. 2, Texas A&M at No. 3, Alabama at No. 5). By comparison, the SEC laid claim to seven of the top-10 classes in 2025 and six of the top-10 classes in 2024, though there’s still plenty of time for this year’s rankings to change between now and the early signing period in December.
Still, it’s fair to wonder how the perception of the league might begin to change if another non-SEC school lifts the national championship trophy come January. A three-year title drought would match the league’s longest dry spell since the turn of the century, when Oklahoma (2000), Miami (2001) and Ohio State (2002) boxed out the conference until Nick Saban won his first national title at LSU in 2003, igniting arguably the greatest coaching career the sport has ever seen. But Saban and his seven rings are no longer part of the equation following his shocking retirement in early 2024, which tossed another wrench into the league’s battle to maintain supremacy. One can only imagine what the discourse will be like if a third straight national title eludes the SEC.
Laken Litman covers college football, college basketball and soccer for FOX Sports. She previously wrote for Sports Illustrated, USA Today and The Indianapolis Star. She is the author of “Strong Like a Woman,” published in spring 2022 to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Follow her at @LakenLitman.
RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast “The Number One College Football Show.” Follow him at @RJ_Young.
Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.
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