Seven storylines that will define the second half of the 2025 college football season

As we enter Week 8 and the second half of the 2025 college football season, there’s a rare sense of uncertainty — and a bit of joy in that uneasiness. It fuels anticipation for what’s next. Which top-10 team will fall? Which under-the-radar matchup will turn into an instant classic? And what surprise twist might emerge in an increasingly chaotic coaching carousel?

On the field, the sport has never felt more balanced. Call it the great flattening — the best teams aren’t quite as dominant, while the second tier has closed the gap.

ESPN’s Bill Connelly illustrated that trend through his SP+ ratings, a predictive and forward-facing metric. Comparing Week 8 SP+ data from 2019 to 2025, he found that the top eight teams this season are rated lower, on average and at every ranking position, than their 2019 counterparts. But from Nos. 9 through 25, the reverse is true — those teams are rated higher across the board in 2025.

The proliferation of the transfer portal and NIL — not just as tools available to some but as foundational pieces of program-building across the country — has created a new era in roster construction. It’s also stripped the top programs of their ability to hoard talent that could be contributing elsewhere. The lure of more playing time and compensation is allowing teams from No. 9 through No. 25 to get a little better, while the elite programs lose the depth edge they enjoyed for much of college football’s modern era.

Thankfully, this new competitive reality has arrived alongside an expanded postseason structure that’s no longer limited to just two or four teams. Logically, if those top-five teams are closer than ever to the rest of the pack, then widening the lens to define a worthy College Football Playoff contender makes sense. But picking contenders is more difficult because the great flattening of college football has made previously stunning results more common. Losses by heavy favorites and top-10 teams are becoming routine because those top programs no longer carry the hammer of their predecessors — and accepting that reality means learning to live with the uncertainty that has become the sport’s new normal.

And while the end point is uncertain, a road map has emerged for the journey ahead. Here are some of the storylines that will define the discussion around college football as we move through the second half of the 2025 season.

A collision course for Ohio State and Indiana 

To call back to our ratings discussion, Ohio State is the only team that seems to be pulling ahead from a crowded pack at the top. The Buckeyes are an overwhelming No. 1 in the polls and the power ratings, and they seem be getting stronger with additional tests. Now that Penn State has crashed out, the number of roadblocks on the regular-season schedule is limited. 

So Ohio State’s biggest enemy, it seems, is itself — and any Michigan-related nightmares that could be lingering in Ann Arbor at the end of the year. As long as the Buckeyes take care of business, the reigning national champions will be back in the College Football Playoff, with a stop in Indianapolis to play for the Big Ten championship along the way.

And what might be waiting for Ohio State in Indianapolis could be epic. Now that Indiana has handed Oregon a head-to-head loss, the Hoosiers find themselves with an inroad to the Big Ten Championship Game for the first time in program history.

Curt Cignetti has shaken up the power dynamic locally in basketball-crazed Bloomington as well as nationally, taking Indiana up to No. 3 in the AP Top 25 poll for the first time in school history with a chance for back-to-back College Football Playoff appearances. Indiana, like Ohio State, has a game against Penn State remaining that doesn’t carry the same weight after James Franklin’s firing. If the Hoosiers can handle business, they could meet one of the two teams that defeated them in 2024. Cignetti has reflected on last year’s loss to Ohio State in Columbus with notes on what went wrong and what was learned, so there would be some enjoyment in getting another shot at the Buckeyes on a “neutral” site at Lucas Oil Stadium. 

Notre Dame tries to run the table (again)

We’re putting this storyline near the top because it could be settled by the end of Saturday’s games. If Notre Dame holds serve at home and defeats USC for a third straight season, the Fighting Irish will keep alive the hope of winning 10 straight games after an 0-2 start. The fact that we’re back here again — with Notre Dame’s postseason outlook hanging on a razor’s edge each weekend — seems exhausting from the outside. But inside Marcus Freeman’s program, there’s a calm, mature, step-by-step approach to the challenge. The urgency the Fighting Irish carried after an early season upset loss to Northern Illinois arguably contributed to some of the most impressive football we saw from anyone over the back half of the season. When teams had to level up for the College Football Playoff, it was no problem for Notre Dame.

In terms of CFP contention, the situation is clearly different than it was a year ago. The Fighting Irish have more losses but also defeats to quality opponents, with Miami and Texas A&M off to a combined 11-0 start. Last year’s CFP bracket included five teams at-large selections with two losses, but three of those participants suffered their second loss in a conference championship game. The other two, Ohio State and Tennessee, each had wins against a top-12 team according to the committee’s final rankings.

Currently, Notre Dame has no wins against top-25 teams, and its only remaining ranked opponent is USC at No. 20 in Week 8. So the Irish are not only playing with fire in terms of avoiding a third loss, but also need the teams they defeat to rise to the status of a “good win” in the eyes of the selection committee that will pick the seven at-large teams for the bracket.

Considering all the possibilities is enough to make anyone’s head hurt, which is why inside the program in South Bend the focus remains on improving and taking care of each opponent in dominant fashion. Outside South Bend, the debates will rage as long as the Fighting Irish keep winning.

Who emerges from a muddled SEC picture?

Last season, the SEC title race got so complicated that we had to build models to constantly calculate tiebreaker scenarios, and the threat of a coin toss may have been on the line. A 16-team league where half the conference is a realistic College Football Playoff contender at midseason creates loads of tension for the final weeks of the schedule. There’s an easy path to the CFP — winning the league — and a much more difficult one: enduring and winning strength-of-schedule debates against competition from other conferences. Consider the Fable of 2024: Where Alabama had an inroad to the SEC Championship Game before losing at Oklahoma as a two-touchdown favorite on Nov. 23. Flip that result, and the Crimson Tide are playing in the SEC Championship Game and in the College Football Playoff, where the team still finished as the first at-large team left out, even with the late upset loss.

So while the SEC vs. Big Ten battle for at-large spots is certainly coming, the more urgent storyline is figuring out which teams will make it to Atlanta with a chance to secure the easiest path to the CFP. Alabama, once again, finds itself as a main character, playing the role of pace car. The Crimson Tide have no SEC losses yet and are heavy favorites to make the title game this year. But they still have to play Tennessee, LSU and Oklahoma — a trio of teams among the seven that enter Week 8 nationally ranked and with just one loss in league play.

Alabama is joined at the top by Ole Miss and Texas A&M, each with 3-0 records, and those three teams have no crossover on the league schedule. It’s possible, in theory, that all three go 8-0 in conference play, and we are right back to calculating the cumulative winning percentage of conference opponents. But don’t break out the calculators just yet — there’s half a season left to play, and a Week 8 schedule alone could disrupt the entire outlook. As we head into the second half of the season, there are 10 teams with a fair argument as real SEC title contenders. They can’t all make the CFP, so which two can give themselves the best chance by making it to Atlanta? 

Miami vs. November

After more than two decades waiting for a true return to title contention, “The U” is back. Mario Cristobal has already achieved base-level success in breaking the hype cycle and delivering real results, carrying a 15-3 record since the start of last season. But while last year brought some program-level notoriety — just the second 10-win season since 2004 — it ended without appearances in the ACC Championship Game or the College Football Playoff. 

Those opportunities were dashed in November, when Miami went 2-2 against ACC opponents, including one-score road losses to Georgia Tech and Syracuse, the latter after giving up a 21-point lead in the regular-season finale. The loss to the Orange bounced Miami from the ACC Championship Game, and when the College Football Playoff selection committee issued its final ruling for 2024, the Hurricanes checked in at No. 13, the second team (behind Alabama) left out of an at-large spot. These were winnable opportunities for a team that entered November with an 8-0 record.

Unfortunately, this is a theme not unfamiliar to Miami fans. While anecdotes recall November road games in cold environments that don’t suit the Hurricanes, Cristobal’s early tenure shows struggles finishing the season. Since taking over before the 2022 season, Cristobal is 4-8 in November. Adding to the concern, both the 2023 and 2024 seasons also included bowl losses. In total, Miami is 4-10 after Halloween under Cristobal, and the No. 2-ranked Hurricanes are likely to confront those demons again, with ACC title and College Football Playoff implications all through the month.

For the record, this Miami team has the best offensive line-defensive line combination in the country and appears on a path to fulfilling expectations for a team entering Week 8 ranked No. 2. Carson Beck is a top contender for the Heisman Trophy (more on that later), and offseason defensive changes have produced a much more reliable — even dominant — unit. Miami looks as good as it has since the glory days fans are eager to reclaim, but the path to being comfortable as one of the sport’s alphas requires putting the belt of title contention on the line week after week and successfully defending it as the season enters its most pressure-packed month.   

The cascading dominos of the coaching carousel 

If you include Stanford, six power conference programs are already searching for a new coach for 2026 and the firing of James Franklin may have accelerated the timeline for notable schools to make moves. The latest look at the hot seat has CBS Sports’ Richard Johnson and Chris Hummer listing Florida, Wisconsin and Auburn among the other power conference jobs where things are heating up heading into the weekend. Penn State being open could spark just as much movement as Franklin being available, since the Nittany Lions could very likely target a sitting head coach who in turn would leave vacant a desirable position for another sitting head coach. 

So you see it happening, right? A world where Penn State, Florida, Auburn, Arkansas and Wisconsin are open is one that will lead to a lot of other openings at current FBS schools, sparking a chain reaction of change that could represent a seismic shift in the coaching landscape. It’s not hyperbole — we’ve seen it before, most recently at the end of the 2021 season, when it wasn’t just the number of power-conference jobs changing hands (14) but the magnitude of the players involved. Florida, LSU, Miami, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Oregon and USC have either won or played in a national championship game in the 21st century. All of them changed head coaches in that 2021-22 cycle. Lincoln Riley left Oklahoma for USC, Brian Kelly left Notre Dame for LSU, and the hires of both Mario Cristobal from Oregon to Miami and Dan Lanning to Oregon have proven transformative for both programs. We are in for that kind of cycle again, where the caliber of jobs open is already strong, but the domino hires could end up being just as impactful.

Fascinating Group of Six races add intrigue to the CFP picture 

One of the obvious improvements to the College Football Playoff format was allowing access to the Group of Six. While far less inclusive than its FCS counterpart, the CFP hypothetically reserves one spot for a league champion outside the power conferences. The update was announced, and college football fans braced for a home stretch of concurrent CFP-related races across the country.

But then Boise State ruined the fun with one of the program’s many dominant runs through the regular season. The Broncos were ranked in the top 15 by Nov. 1, and the debate was not whether they would get the fifth conference champion spot, but how they stacked up against the champions from the Big 12 and ACC. As it turned out, Boise State finished ranked ahead of both Arizona State and Clemson and well ahead of Army, the next-highest ranked Group of Six conference champion.

There is not an obvious favorite this season so far. The closest example might be South Florida, which logged wins against Florida and Boise State (interestingly enough) in nonconference play and just threw down the gauntlet in the American with a 63-36 win against fellow contender North Texas. 

The Bulls are currently No. 19 in the AP Top 25 poll and have another massive head-to-head coming with No. 22 Memphis in two weeks. But what if the winner of that game stumbles again, or unranked Tulane creeps into the picture? The American almost has too many contenders to allow a Boise State–like sun run from the Group of Six to the CFP, which opens the conversation to the Mountain West, Sun Belt, MAC and Conference USA. Boise State and James Madison have a chance to build their argument over the next couple of weeks, but the wide-open nature of all these conference races reflects the great flattening we see at the top of the sport.

Is there room for a dark horse in the Heisman Trophy race? 

If we’re going to use the oddsmakers as our guide, the results of the last two weeks have really winnowed the field for the top Heisman Trophy contenders. As teams tumble in the rankings, so do the Heisman chances for their star players, and the concurrent rise of players like Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza has stripped some of the odds equity from what was a wide-open field. Currently, FanDuel Sportsbook has three quarterbacks with far and away better odds than the rest of the field. Miami’s Carson Beck (+300), Alabama’s Ty Simpson (+320) and Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza (+430) have a combined implied probability of 67.7%.

But what about the other 32.3%? Odds, as always, are subject to change, and market conditions can — and will — dictate wild swings in these probabilities. As a thought exercise, it’s worth considering how many worthy players have the potential to rise from that 32.3% and challenge the likes of Carson Beck, who, for the record, has odds of +300, translating to a 25% implied probability.

Maybe it’s USC’s Jayden Maiava or Notre Dame’s CJ Carr, each with a big stage Saturday to showcase what has been some of the most impressive quarterback play to date. Or maybe it’s Utah’s Devon Dampier, who could shake off his early-season defeat to Texas Tech with a stat-stuffed run that sets up a rematch against the Red Raiders two days before the Heisman ballots are due. The odds suggest there’s a good chance one of the top three wins, but the rest of college football is filled with stars ready to be the underdog story from the 32.3%.