The 2025 college football season is upon us.
After Week Zero whet our appetites, the season officially gets going over Labor Day weekend with a trio of games featuring top-10 matchups and the weekend ends with a legendary football coach making his college football debut.
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Here are the biggest games of the opening weekend.
Is this a national championship game preview? Don’t rule it out. Texas is the favorite to win the national title at BetMGM (+450) and Ohio State is the No. 2 favorite at +525. There hasn’t been a playoff rematch between non-conference opponents in the College Football Playoff era. This matchup has odds better than any to be the first.
Both teams enter with highly touted quarterbacks who are largely unproven in college football. Yes, we’ve gotten glimpses of Arch Manning over the last two seasons at Texas, but he’s still thrown fewer than 100 passes. This is by far the biggest game of his career. A big game from him will only solidify his status as the early Heisman favorite.
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Former five-star recruit Julian Sayin will start at QB for Ohio State after he won the team’s competition during fall camp. He has the best receiver in college football in Jeremiah Smith, the favorite among all non-QBs to win the Heisman Trophy and the No. 4 favorite overall.
Ohio State also has a remade defense too. LB Sonny Styles and DB Caleb Downs are back, but a ton of talent is gone to the NFL and there’s a new coordinator in town. Former Lions head coach and Patriots defensive coordinator Matt Patricia is running OSU’s defense after Jim Knowles left for Penn State. Can Ohio State get pressure on Manning? Texas’ biggest question could be up front after it lost multiple offensive linemen to the NFL, including first-round draft pick Kelvin Banks Jr.
Both teams are looking for rebound seasons in 2025, though the contexts are quite different. Alabama and second-year head coach Kalen DeBoer want to get back to the College Football Playoff after the Tide’s first season with fewer than 10 wins since Nick Saban’s first year in Tuscaloosa (2007). No pressure, Kalen.
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Respectability would be nice for Florida State, though the expectations are higher than that. The Seminoles were a disastrous 2-10 in 2024 thanks to horrific QB play and general malaise. Former UCF head coach Gus Malzahn arrives to run the offense and the new QB is Boston College transfer Thomas Castellanos. He added some fire to this matchup over the summer with his comments about Alabama.
Castellanos was an effective starter at Boston College, but he lost his job midway through the 2024 season and that led to his transfer. Is he a better fit in Malzahn’s offense?
Alabama’s new starting QB is Ty Simpson. He backed up Jalen Milroe in 2024 and won’t be the running threat Milroe was in his time as a starter. However, we could see a more refined passing game like we saw Washington run in 2023 under DeBoer and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb. Grubb is back in college football after spending the 2024 season as the OC for the Seattle Seahawks.
LSU head coach Brian Kelly has talked a lot over the offseason about how important the opener is for his Tigers. LSU has lost its past five season openers dating back to its national title season in 2019. LSU fans would sure love it if a win Saturday night meant the Tigers were on their way to the national championship again.
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LSU has one of the toughest schedules in the country and a loss could force the Tigers to go 7-1 in SEC play to make the playoff. QB Garrett Nussmeier was awarded the No. 18 jersey earlier in the week after aptly replacing Jayden Daniels in 2024 and LB Harold Perkins Jr. should be healthy to start the season. We’ll see how much he rushes the passer in 2025.
Clemson was our preseason No. 1 team and Dabo Swinney would love his team to become the first 16-0 team in college football history. We think this Tigers team has the schedule and ability to do it. Cade Klubnik is the No. 2 Heisman favorite behind Manning at +700 and just ahead of Nussmeier at +950. Klubnik had a breakout season in 2024 and has three phenomenal wide receivers.
The Clemson defense is stacked as well. Peter Woods and T.J. Parker give the Tigers one of the best defensive lines in college football and the players behind them are pretty good too. Clemson’s home-field advantage could play a significant role in this one.
Notre Dame is back at Hard Rock Stadium for the second time in eight months after beating Penn State in the Orange Bowl in January to make it to the national championship game.
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Players like RB Jeremiyah Love and LB Drayk Bowen are back from that team as CJ Carr will make his first start at quarterback. The grandson of former Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr won the Irish’s QB competition over Kenny Minchey. We wouldn’t be surprised if Minchey got a series or two over the course of the game.
Sunday is the first game of the Carson Beck era at Miami. The former Georgia starter is making his first start since he left the SEC title game with an elbow injury. The recovery from that injury has limited Beck’s practice time in the spring as he was able to practice with the Hurricanes for the first time in July.
Miami has a lot of turnover at receiver as players like Xavier Restrepo and Elijah Arroyo are gone. Beck will need to mesh quickly with his new teammates.
Even if Miami’s offense doesn’t take a step back after Cam Ward was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, its playoff hopes will hinge on its defense. The Hurricanes allowed over 25 points per game in 2024 and gave up 28 or more points in three of their last four games of the season as they missed out on the College Football Playoff.
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All eyes will be on Bill Belichick’s college football debut on Labor Day. The six-time Super Bowl winner is just the second head coach to lead a college football team after winning a Super Bowl along with Bill Walsh. But Walsh had been a college football coach before; he returned to Stanford after three Super Bowls with the 49ers.
The Tar Heels’ offense ran through Omarion Hampton in 2024. He rushed for 1,660 yards on the way to becoming a first-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Chargers and the only UNC player drafted. Can Davion Gause and Benjamin Hall come close to that production?
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Belichick announced Wednesday his starting QB will be South Alabama transfer Gio Lopez, who accounted for 25 touchdowns and more than 3,000 yards combined for the Jaguars last season. He won the job over Max Johnson, a former starter at both Texas A&M and LSU who missed much of the 2024 season after a brutal knee injury in Week 1.
TCU is a sleeper in the Big 12 after winning its last four games of the 2024 season to finish 9-4. However, the only team with a winning record in that stretch was Louisiana in the New Mexico Bowl.
QB Josh Hoover threw for over 3,900 yards and completed two-thirds of his passes last season. He’s one of the best quarterbacks in the Big 12. But if the Horned Frogs are really going to make noise in the conference race, they need to fix a defense that gave up 30 or more points five times last year. Unsurprisingly, TCU was 1-4 in those games.
Other games to watch
Auburn (-2.5) at Baylor, 8 p.m. ET Friday (Fox): Baylor is one of the favorites to get to the Big 12 title game and yet is a home underdog to start the season against what could be a bottom-half SEC team. Auburn is a boom-or-bust team in 2025. The Tigers could go 9-3 or 3-9 and neither outcome would be all that surprising.
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Georgia Tech (-4.5) at Colorado, 8 p.m. ET Friday (ESPN): The Yellow Jackets played in seven one-possession games a year ago and were 4-3 in those contests. Colorado named Liberty transfer Kaidon Salter as the team’s starting QB this week ahead of five-star freshman JuJu Lewis.
Syracuse vs. Tennessee (-14), Noon ET (ESPN): The Orange went 10-3 in 2024 as former Ohio State QB Kyle McCord threw the ball all over the yard. He’s gone and so is leading receiver Trebor Pena. And the schedule is much, much tougher. Saturday is the first game for new Tennessee QB Joey Aguilar. He’ll be embraced by the Vols faithful if he has a better season than Nico Iamaleava did in 2024.
Cal at Oregon State (-1.5), 10:30 p.m. ET (ESPN): Cal will start true freshman Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele at QB after he won the job over Ohio State QB Devin Brown. Sagapolutele transferred from Oregon during the spring and Cal is looking for its first winning season since 2019.
Utah (-6) at UCLA, 11 p.m. ET (Fox): The first Saturday of the season will easily stretch into Sunday morning. The Utes are a serious playoff contender if solid QB play can be coupled with the team’s typically excellent defense and run game. That’s why the team added former New Mexico QB Devon Dampier in the transfer portal.
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Virginia Tech vs. South Carolina (-7.5), 3 p.m. ET Sunday (ESPN): This line may be a little closer than you’d have imagined given the teams’ 2024 performance. Virginia Tech has had a lot of roster turnover but brings back QB Kyron Drones in what could be a make-or-break year for head coach Brent Pry. South Carolina QB LaNorris Sellers was one of the best in the SEC in 2024 and looks to take another step forward in 2025. He may need to for the Gamecocks to sustain their success. South Carolina lost a lot of defensive talent to the NFL.
