As expected, shortly after the clock reached double zero in Monday night's College Football Playoff National Championship Game, the way-too-early top-25 projections for the 2025 season began rolling out.
As many as 11 national media outlets have released way-too-early top-25 forecasts now that all attention in college football is looking ahead to next season. Ten of those have been issued since Ohio State was crowned as 2024 national champions.
On3 got the jump on everybody, releasing it way-too-early top-25 on Monday ahead of the national championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame. Oklahoma was the No. 18 team in On3's look ahead to the 2025 college football season.
The Sooners were also included in the way-too-early top-25 projections put out by The Athletic/New York Times and 247Sports. OU is represented as the No. 25 team in both of those rankings.
As many as 11 (Pro Football Focus and Sports Illustrated) and as few as eight SEC teams (USA Today and Yahoo) were included in the sundry way-too-early 2025 projections. Ten SEC teams were featured in the top-25 rankings put out by FOX, 247Sports, CBS, On3 and Athlon Sports, and nine appeared in the early rankings posted by ESPN, The Athletic, Sports Illustrated and Sporting News.
Ohio State and Texas are the consensus favorites as the best two teams heading into next season. The national champions Buckeyes were the top choice of six of the national media outlets that have weighed in with their early calls on the top-25 teams to kick off the 2025 season. Texas was projected as the No. 1 team by five of the outlets, and Penn State was voted No. 1 by one outlet.
Besides Texas, Georgia, LSU and Alabama showed up the most among SEC programs in the top 10 in the initial wave of the way-too-early top-25 rankings. Georgia's average position was five, LSU's was nine and Alabama was 10.
Typically, the outlets that produce way-too-early top-25 projections in January will offer revised projections in another six weeks or so based on any new information or insights, and again in April after the spring practice period.
The projections that are now out, however, will get the debate going and keep college football in the news, at least to some degree, during the long offseason.