There’s a new national championship favorite after Week 1 of college football

An eventual opening weekend of the 2025 college football season found some notable changes among the top teams and in the early national championship picture.

Where things stand in the updated college football rankings and national championship picture for 2025 after the Week 1 games. / Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

After an opening weekend where several highly-ranked college football teams faced each other on the same field, there was bound to be some notable changes to the new rankings, and where things stand in the updated early national championship race.

The biggest change so far is that Texas is no longer the favorite to win it all after its loss at Ohio State on Saturday.

A new SEC tops the title odds

Georgia is now in the lead to win the national championship, as the reigning SEC champions are listed at 18.1 percent likelihood to go all the way, according to the latest numbers from ESPN’s Football Power Index prediction model.

Major sportsbooks have followed that lead, bumping up the Bulldogs into pole position with +600 odds to win the trophy this season, according to FanDuel Sportsbook.

They’re in a three-way tie with Big Ten contenders Penn State and Ohio State atop the leaderboard in Vegas, followed by the Longhorns at +750 and LSU at +1200.

Texas debuted in the preseason as the favorite to win the title according to ESPN’s model, with 24.7 percent odds on the index prior to kickoff, but have now slipped into second place, with a 14.2 percent shot at the natty.

The index also turned heads this weekend when it maintained Texas in the No. 1 position in its updated 136-team college football rankings, despite its sluggish loss on the road against the Buckeyes.

Texas laid an egg in Week 1

Arch Manning’s highly-anticipated showing in his first major start left more questions than answers, as the quarterback hit 17 of 30 passes for just 170 yards with one touchdown and one interception in the face of the Buckeyes’ tough defense.

Yet, in ESPN’s updated rankings, there were the Longhorns at No. 1, and Ohio State, despite its victory, was still stuck in the No. 3 position nationally.

That led to plenty of online speculation and outrage from fans that ESPN was simply airing out its apparently blatant SEC bias and keeping the Buckeyes down, but that would misunderstand what the point of the Power Index models are for.

Computer rankings are a different animal

Unlike most other college football rankings that reward places to teams based on previous results, the FPI model simulates every team’s game 20,000 times and arranges teams based on forward projections of how a team is expected to perform in the future.

Moreover, the Longhorns did fare slightly better on the field despite the final score, racking up 100 more yards than the Ohio State offense, and averaging more yards per play, the kind of metrics that computer projections place a heavy emphasis on when stacking teams against one another.

That’s why, for instance, Texas remained atop the 136-team rankings despite losing on the road to Ohio State on Saturday.

The model still forecasts that the Longhorns are the most dominant team on any field, projecting it to be 23.2 points better than an average opponent on a neutral field.

With more places up for grabs in the College Football Playoff, and given the perceived quality of the Longhorns’ loss in the eyes of selectors down the road, there’s still plenty margin for error just one week into the season.

Provided, of course, that Texas keeps winning and doesn't make any more serious mistakes.

Regardless of what the analysts, or the bookies, or the computer rankings say, Texas is still very much one of a select few teams that can go all the way in 2025.

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