College football rankings: Ohio State finishes regular season No. 1 in CBS Sports 136

The college football regular season came to a close on Saturday night, and now we turn our attention to the conference championship schedule and the College Football Playoff bracket announcement. But before each conference crowns its champion for 2025, now is a great time to take stock of how every team in the FBS stacks up against each other in the college football rankings. 

The CBS Sports 136 is a comprehensive ranking of all 136 FBS teams, as determined by experts from CBS Sports and 247Sports. We begin the process in August with a preseason balloting and will continue to finalize the picture of college football for this season with another update next week and then a final one after the conclusion of the national championship game. But here, after Week 14 results are in the books, is a good point to see how things have concluded for each team before the coaching carousel and transfer portal continue to adjust the way each team looks moving forward. 

For the top — and most important spot in the rankings — the biggest news coming out of Week 14 was Ohio State solidifying its position at No. 1. With Texas A&M’s loss to Texas and the Buckeyes’ emphatic win at Michigan, our voters have reached a unanimous position that Ohio State is the No. 1 team in the country. Ryan Day’s squad has held the No. 1 position in our rankings for several weeks, but to wrap the regular season with that unanimous support and a 12-0 record puts a successful season in perspective for the reigning national champions. Of course, anyone tied to Ohio State recognizes the bigger challenges ahead, including a Big Ten title game matchup against Indiana and pursuing another national championship. But it’s worth noting that this program lost double-digit starters and NFL Draft picks after winning it all and ran it back to the point of being 12-0 and unquestioned as the top dog in the sport. 

The latest update for the CBS Sports 136 also has some reactions to the Week 14 results, including an adjustment for Texas A&M after the Aggies took their first loss of the season at Texas on Friday night. The Aggies dropped from No. 3 to No. 6, barely edging out Ole Miss for the No. 6 spot with an average voter ranking of 6.33 compared to 6.55 for Ole Miss. Texas Tech moved up into the No. 3 spot in our rankings by beating out Georgia and Oregon for the honor of highest-ranked one-loss team, again by narrow margins in a competitive tier of the top 10 that sits behind Ohio State and Indiana but ahead of the Aggies and the Rebels. 

Because our voters have been tracking these teams and judging resumes all season long, one single result has a limit on how much movement will be created in the rankings. As such, some of the biggest changes in terms of the number of spots moved up or down can be found further down outside the top 20. We’ve detailed some of those notable week-to-week adjustments in the Mover’s Report below the top 25 table. 

College football experts from CBS Sports and 247Sports contribute ballots each week, which are averaged together for our rankings. You can see the top 25 below and 26-136 on our rankings page.

Biggest movers 

• No. 70 Florida (+8): The Gators finished a disjointed and ultimately disappointing season with a cathartic rivalry win against Florida State on Saturday, then positioned itself for the future by hiring Jon Sumrall on Sunday. It’s not often that 4-8 teams finish inside the top 75 of our rankings, but Florida’s win against Texas and competitiveness against other quality opponents gave them a leg up when sorting out teams in the bottom half of the rankings. 
• No. 34 TCU (+7): Sonny Dykes’ team finished the season with back-to-back quality wins against Houston and Cincinnati, providing a nice rebound from back-to-back losses and sending the Horned Frogs into the bowl season with some momentum. Since Houston and Cincinnati each spent considerable time inside the top 35 this season, it makes sense the win would get a positive response from our voters. 
• No. 21 Arizona (+6): Speaking of momentum, Brent Brennan and the Wildcats finished the regular season with five straight wins, closing with a rivalry road win against Arizona State. This team was buried in the bottom of the Big 12 last season but returned with a roar, finishing tied for fourth in the conference standings with a 6-3 record. 
• No. 25 Tennessee (-6): Getting run out of the building by your rival is never a fun way to end the regular season, and now a Tennessee team that was at one point in the mix to return to the College Football Playoff will be making holiday plans elsewhere after finishing 8-4 following a 45-24 loss to Vanderbilt. The overall resume is still strong compared to the average FBS team, since the only losses came to Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma and Vanderbilt. But Tennessee measures itself against those teams and not the average FBS team.  
• No. 41 Cincinnati (-7): The Bearcats were a midseason darling of the CBS Sports 136 as Scott Satterfield’s group ran off a seven-game winning streak that encompassed the early portion of the Big 12 schedule. However, Cincinnati lost the final four games of the regular season and now returns somewhere close to preseason expectations with a 7-5 record overall and a 5-4 showing in conference play. 
• No. 48 San Diego State (-13): This is a pretty dramatic reaction to a double-overtime loss to another conference title contender, as a defeat to New Mexico in extra time dropped the Aztecs to 9-3 on the year. The computer ratings formula adopted by the Mountain West to break a four-way tie for first place left San Diego State on the outside looking in when it comes to playing this weekend in the Mountain West title, and getting judged as a three-loss team instead of a two-loss team resulted in the Aztecs losing some tiebreakers on ballots from our voters.

Check out the rest of the CBS Sports 136: Teams ranked 26-136