Pay attention Longhorn fans. Texas is on a collision course with these football teams. The most favored preseason national title winner in 2025 has odds around +500. For comparison, in 2024 and 2023, the number for the favorite was half of that. Meaning, they were twice as favored to win it all. In 2022, we started the season with the overwhelming favorite (Alabama) at basically even or less odds! Now, that a true favorite.
Pay attention Longhorn fans. Texas is on a collision course with these football teams.
The most favored preseason national title winner in 2025 has odds around +500. For comparison, in 2024 and 2023, the number for the favorite was half of that. Meaning, they were twice as favored to win it all. In 2022, we started the season with the overwhelming favorite (Alabama) at basically even or less odds! That’s a true favorite.
The markets suggest that there are as many as eight to ten teams that can realistically win it. I agree that the field is wide.
But I can narrow that field down to six. With 95% confidence. Even with a counterintuitive flyer or two thrown in for good measure.
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Let’s start off with the highest floor team in college football: The Nittany Lions of Penn State.
PENN STATE
If we learned anything about the last two Big 10 national champions that broke the SEC reign of dominance, it’s that seniority, experience, and timing the exact peak of the development cycle with a veteran QB, OL, DL, and secondary is paramount.
14 returning starters from a Top 5 team in the current landscape of college football should catch your attention. Particularly when that team upgraded every lost starter but two. Yeah, you ain’t upgrading Tyler Warren and Abdul Carter, but I expect the Nittany Lions to have a dozen draft picks in 2026. That’s an important qualifier for the rarefied air.
It doesn’t hurt to have the best running back duo in the country, either. Nick Singleton (40 career touchdowns, 3680 total career yards from scrimmage) is just ahead of Florida’s Jadan Baugh as my favorite RB in college football and his #2 Kaytron Allen has over 3,000 career yards from scrimmage and 28 touchdowns. Texas fans love to talk about our “loaded RB room” because we have bodies and a theory. Penn State has actual performance and proven elite talent over years of play. There are levels to this.
It also pays to have elite coordinators on both sides of the ball. I can make a good argument that Michigan and Ohio State out-coached their competition in the playoffs as much as bludgeoned them with veteran talent. They did both, of course. But their Xs and Os were demonstrably on point.
Penn State is an old veteran team, with outstanding continuity and where they have change – new defensive coordinator Jim Knowles – it’s an upgrade. Forget John Mateer and Carson Beck. Their new DC was arguably the biggest offseason addition in college football. Knowles, like offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki, is fundamentally a creative, but he embraces the game’s possibilities without losing fundamental football. That’s a rare combo.
In the offseason, Penn State used the portal correctly, at the correct spot, revamping their entire WR room. Three new starters.
That’s very un-Penn State-like. They tend to double down stubbornly on existing personnel, make excuses for their exposed underbelly, and use the portal for piecemeal change, but a true revamp signals a self-awareness that they’ve been lacking.
Last year, those three new additions – Kyron Hudson, Trebor Pena, Devonte Ross – combined for 198 catches, 2446 yards and 23 touchdowns at their old homes. Might these receivers might be a slight upgrade over the unit that couldn’t record a reception against Notre Dame in the playoff? Might Drew Allar be a tad more effective throwing to receivers that other college football teams actually want?
But, I don’t like Drew Allar. If you properly understand Drew Allar as a toolsier Will Howard super-veteran rather than indulge the NFL 1:1 draft pick nonsense, then your understanding of the team and its possibilities will come into sharper focus.
No team in college football has fewer obvious weaknesses to attack or is more well-rounded.
The elephant in the room?
It’s Big Game James Franklin. We can’t discount his inability to stay in his lane as an elite recruiter, motivator, and larger program builder. At heart, he’s a meddler and fancies himself as an Xs and Os equal to his coordinators. But their favorable Big 10 schedule and pathetic non-con absolutely begs for an undefeated or 1 loss regular season, and Franklin is actually outstanding as a favorite. He’ll even cover the spread for you with a late tacky touchdown.
Will Franklin humble himself and let his coordinators run the show and limit his desire to insert himself into a game’s key moments? Is Allar just fundamentally not a winning QB in big contests? Is Penn State full of floor but lacking the spark to create the ceiling needed to play up against the elite?
Did I just profile the perfect bridesmaid?
Let’s play ball and find out. As for Penn State’s Ohio State problem…beyond a few Franklin moments, raw talent and staff aggression has actually been the primary difference in that series.
Where is Ohio State most vulnerable this year? What should 2025 Penn State do well? Who just added a coordinator with the nutsack to put in a game plan against an offense whose personnel he knows intimately?
You won’t find a better candidate for a favorable playoff seed with fewer obvious vulnerabilities.
Whoever wants to win it all is probably going to have to beat this football team somewhere on their journey. Their floor is inarguable. The season will tell us about their ceiling.
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Understanding the larger college football landscape makes you a better ball knower and helps you understand the Longhorns a lot better. [Want to be the most informed Texas Longhorns football fan? Order the 2025 edition of Thinking Texas Football today!]
Category: General Sports
