The Athletic's Stewart Mandel is a preseason Penn State believer, placing the Nittany Lions atop his too-early top 25 for 2025. "I'm skeptical they can actually pull it off," Mandel writes, "but on paper, James Franklin's team deserves that status given how many players are returning."

The CFP will never likely surpass the NFL in the attention economy, but the march through the first 12-team Playoff has been a positive one.

Now that it’s all over and the Ohio State Buckeyes are the college football national champions, it can be definitively said: Expanding the College Football Playoff worked.

We grew up on a college football season that climaxed on New Year's Day. Is there a way back to that while keeping the excitement of the past month?

Ohio State came out on top in the national championship on Monday, outlasting a late Notre Dame comeback push to win 34-23. The game brought an end to the first edition of the expanded College Football Playoff, which features 12 teams vying for the title instead of four.

Making it to No. 1 in the College Football Playoff rankings means everything. What teams have made it to the top of the polls up to now?

The early betting favorite to win next year’s national championship is Ohio State. The question nobody can really answer at this time is what sort of game will the Buckeyes or anyone else return to when they kick it off again seven months from now.