The nine teams that could win the national championship

With the introduction of the College Football Playoff, and specifically the 12-team model, the CFP committee and NCAA emphasize the idea that anyone can win a national championship.

[Sign up for Inside Texas TODAY and get the BEST Longhorns scoop!]

But that isn’t really true, is it? Did anyone think that Boise State was winning it all last year, even with the nation’s second-best player and a sole loss of just three points to the No. 1 overall seed? Deep in your hearts, you’d like to say yes, but we all know the real answer.

Every year, 67 Power Conference teams, a sprinkle of G5 teams and Notre Dame load up rosters with hopes of making the Playoff and winning the whole thing. But at the end of the day, how many can actually hoist that trophy in January?

While sports gambling can be a treacherous endeavor, Vegas’ lines can often tell us a lot about who the best teams are expected to be heading into the season, and they are surprisingly accurate. Over the last 10 seasons, just two teams have won the national championship with betting odds lower than the top three.

Michigan was still +900 in 2023 and barely behind third-place Ohio State, while 2019 LSU mostly came out of nowhere with the ninth-best odds heading into the season. We may never see a team like that again.

Looking ahead to 2025, we can use Vegas’ odds alongside another metric to make a strongly educated guess about who can truly contend for a title. ESPN’s Bill Connelly has released SP+ for over a decade. They use a combination of returning production, recent recruiting, and recent history to give every team a single power-rated number ahead of the season.

These rankings are not held behind a paywall, making it much more accessible to figure out who the most talented teams in the nation are. His numbers aren’t perfect, but they did accurately identify Ohio State as the best team last season.

Funnily enough, SP+ and Vegas agree on something: Nine teams separate themselves from the rest heading into 2025. Vegas has five teams comfortably under +1000 odds for the natty: OSU, Texas, Penn State, Oregon, and Georgia. Four of those five teams make up the top five of SP+ rankings, with Oregon barely falling to seventh.

The only other team in the top five is Alabama, sitting at a steep No. 2. The Crimson Tide are sixth in betting odds at this point—a slight difference in theory but still confidence from both sides in their ability to win it all. Three other teams join Alabama with odds between +1000 and +2000: Notre Dame, Clemson, and LSU. Conveniently again, these three make up the sixth, eighth, and ninth power-rated teams in Connelly’s model.

These nine teams are the only ones with a rating of 22 or higher on SP+ and betting odds under +2000. Even with Michigan knocking on the doorstep at 10th in both odds, they’re still a tier behind all of these teams. Between industry-accepted power ratings and the numbers that dominate the sports-betting economy, you can feel pretty good that your national champion comes from this group.

SEC:
Texas, Georgia, Alabama, LSU

B10:
Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon

ACC:
Clemson

Independent:
Notre Dame

While SP+’s 2024 rankings are still behind a paywall, we can see that Vegas did pretty well last year. No. 2 and No. 4 in odds, Ohio State and Texas, faced off in the CFP semifinal, while No. 1 and No. 3, Georgia and Oregon, won their conferences. Alabama, Ole Miss, and LSU missed out on the playoff at the 5-7 spots, but No. 8 and No. 9, Penn State and Notre Dame, faced each other in the semifinals.

This is likely how it will go in 2025, even with the updated and, frankly, better CFP seeding. Two to three of these teams probably won’t make the CFP. Asking seven pre-picked teams between the SEC and B10 to make it when three of the 12 spots are automatically given to other conferences is pretty unlikely. Teams like the Wolverines, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Florida, and Texas A&M all sit within the top 15 of both of these rankings, and even just a couple of lucky bounces could hoist them ahead of one of the above teams.

Still, if you’re a betting man, you should feel very good about one of these teams hoisting the trophy. Connelly would argue that Alabama is your best bet at the moment, while Vegas is much more bullish on other SEC powerhouses Texas and Georgia. If you were to make a bet on any team to have a 2019 LSU-type run, it’s easily Clemson: NFL talent all over, an ascending QB with potential All-American receivers, and currently the ninth-best odds.

[Order THE LONGHORN ALPHABET today and teach your little ones the A to Z’s of Texas Football!]

The good news for Texas fans is that they’re firmly in the mix. If not for putrid special teams play in 2024, they might be higher in Connelly’s rankings, and the bettors like them as a top-three title favorite in 2025. These nine teams will be highlighted in some future articles here on Inside Texas, discussing how Texas stacks up specifically with the top five teams.