The 2025 college football regular season is now officially a third of the way completed for most teams around the country, and this means that the College Football Playoff picture is beginning to take shape in pretty significant ways.
Genuine contenders are beginning to emerge and separate themselves from the rest of the pack, while pretenders have either already been outed or are likely to be unveiled very shortly.
As far as contenders are concerned, though, ESPN analyst and College GameDay host Kirk Herbstreit believes that 5 squads have really made a statement early on, and he unveiled them on Monday’s episode of the Nonstop podcast with Joey Galloway.
Here’s his top 5:
- LSU
- Penn State
- Ohio State
- Miami
- Georgia
Leading the way for Herbstreit are the LSU Tigers, who are coming off a 56-3 beatdown of FCS opponent Southeastern Louisiana. While some have cooled off on the Bayou Bengals in recent weeks, Herby still firmly believes that Brian Kelly‘s squad is the standard-bearer through the first several weeks of 2025.
He then has the Penn State Nittany Lions at No. 2, Ohio State Buckeyes at 3, Miami Hurricanes at 4, and Georgia Bulldogs rounding things out in the No. 5 slot heading into what’s sure to be a massive slate of Week 5 action.
While the order might be different, Herbstreit’s list coincides with what the AP Poll voters also believe are the 5 best teams in the country as of this moment. Things are only starting to truly heat up across the sport, though, so there are sure to be some massive shake-ups in the coming weeks.
