Week 1 of the 2025 college football season is now officially in the books, and this means that the landscape of who will and won’t be a contender come playoff time is starting to take shape.
There’s obviously a very long way to go before any sort of firm College Football Playoff predictions can be made, but there’s always room for some early predictions and rankings along the way.
CBS Sports’ Danny Kanell recently unveiled his resume-based post-Week 1 top 12 rankings after all the action that took place over the long weekend, and it features several squads that figure to be firmly in the mix come December, and a number of head-scratching exclusions as well.
Kanell’s rankings feature 4 SEC squads, with the LSU Tigers leading the way at No. 1 after their dominant showing over the Clemson Tigers in primetime this past Saturday.
The next highest-ranked SEC side behind the Bayou Bengals are the Auburn Tigers, who came in at No. 5 in Kanell’s rankings, and the South Carolina Gamecocks, coming in just behind them at No. 6.
The Tennessee Volunteers rounded out the SEC squads in Kanell’s rankings, coming in at No. 8 after a dominant showing against the Syracuse Orange.
Kanell’s rankings are sure to shift around as the season moves along, so it will be very interesting to see how each of these teams moves in relation to where they are now from week to week.
