Era of Chaos: Who are college football’s national championship contenders?

Picking college football winners in the Era of Chaos is tough. Your esteemed Yahoo Sports writers, with combined decades of experience covering this game up close, began this season by that almost instantly looked howlingly bad (Clemson to win the ACC! Kansas State to win the Big 12! Penn State vs. Texas in the natty!). , we made picks that … also immediately corkscrewed into the ground. (Thanks, Miami, Memphis and Texas Tech.)

So yes, picking college football games, whether for a news outlet or for gambling purposes, is more hazardous and fraught than ever before. , newcomers are crashing the party, upsets are a weekly occurrence. (At least making our picks public only makes us look ridiculous in retrospect. As for wagering, well … we won’t tell you not to gamble your own money. We’ll just say that seasons like this are why casinos are casinos, while you’re still sitting around convinced your six-team parlay is absolutely going to hit.)

With that in mind, let’s run down the likely and not-so-likely championship contenders at this point in the season. Each has opportunities, each has obstacles. Your champion is (probably) going to be one of these programs:

The total package: Ohio State

Could probably finish second or third in the AFC North right about now. A smothering No. 2-ranked defense and the second-most-efficient QB in the game in Julian Sayin mean that Ohio State is the total package, except for the fact that they haven’t really played anyone yet. Indiana isn’t on the slate in the regular season, and a looming matchup with Penn State to kick off November doesn’t have a fraction of the juice it seemed to this summer. There’s always the maize-and-blue specter of Michigan lurking at the end of the season, but Ohio State should be just fine even if the Buckeyes lose that one. Ohio State as a whole, that is; Ryan Day probably won’t want to eat dinner outside of his house for a few weeks after that.

Not just a cute story: Indiana

Boasts one of the finest offenses in the land, averaging 43.9 points a game. Congratulations, Hoosiers, you have officially graduated from “cute story, done soon” to “legitimate threat, hanging around awhile,” which is a hell of a lot better than going the other direction (see: Penn State, Florida State, Clemson). Strangling Oregon was the key win for Indiana, since no more ranked contests are coming this regular season. It’s not the Hooisers’ fault that Penn State gagged, but Indiana won’t face a ranked opponent until the Big Ten title game. Ah, bloated conferences. They’re the best.

Need to survive the gauntlet: Texas A&M

Still a couple fistfights to go, starting this weekend with LSU and, on the other side of a bye, Missouri. The Texas game looms large now, as A&M could stomp out whatever fragile Longhorn playoff hopes might still remain. Never underestimate the energizing power of vengeance in college football. A&M ranks in the middle of the SEC both offensively and defensively, and one-possession wins over Auburn and Arkansas are a concern. But wins are like pizza after midnight; they’re still pretty good no matter how they look.

(Grant Thomas/Yahoo Sports illustration)

Here they come … again: Alabama

Clambering up out of the grave and sporting a hoodie rather than a houndstooth cap, here comes the Crimson Tide. There are plenty of reasons to suspect the Tide, starting with the fact that when the DeBoer/Grubb offensive gameplan built on weirdness like a 360-pound wide receiver goes wrong, it stays wrong. But Alabama is methodically patching up its most egregious mistakes of last year — taking certain opponents lightly, struggling on the road. Two more ranked opponents remain, and then the regular season ends with the chaos-bringer that is Auburn.

Still a threat: Oregon

Still punch-drunk from getting beat up by a basketball school. Their neon-yellow glow has dimmed a bit, but they still boast a top-5 quarterback in Dante Moore and the second-most-prolific scoring offense (after North Texas) in the entire country. No ranked opponents remain on the slate, but they’ll still need help to make the Big Ten title game

Don’t forget about us: Georgia

This is the college football equivalent of a very good tribute band; sure, they look a lot like the merciless championship Dawgs of 2021-22, but there are some stark differences, starting with the fact that that demonic Dawgs defense is now playing on Sundays in Philadelphia. This year’s version has very real flaws on that side of the ball, exploited — painfully by Tennessee and Ole Miss, disastrously by Alabama — throughout the season. Plus, Georgia now has a new looming concern that it hadn’t much cared about before, that being a surprisingly resilient Georgia Tech team looming in its rear-view mirror.

The interloper: Georgia Tech

Will go as far as Haynes King can carry them. Considering how hard King hurls himself into brick walls up and down the Atlantic coast, this ride could end sooner rather than later.

Fighting for survival: Miami

Go get Carson Beck, they said. Pay him millions in NIL to replace Cam Ward, they said. No way he’s going to make disastrous season-wrecking mistakes, they said. They were almost completely right.

The great unknown: Whoever comes out of the Big 12

Right this moment, Cincinnati — Cincinnati! — has a clearer path to the College Football Playoff than Texas Tech and Arizona State, in case you were wondering if the nation’s weirdest conference was anywhere close to playing out in a normal fashion. The Bearcats-BYU matchup in November now looms as a potential loser-leaves-town throwdown. One-loss Texas Tech could sneak into the playoffs through a side door, though this could end up a 2024-Miami situation, where a surprise conference champ knocks out a better at-large team.

Hoping for an invite: The field-fillers

Because somebody has to fill out those final few slots. Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, Notre Dame, Oklahoma and Missouri have losses that they’ll be rueing right on through Christmas. Virginia is hoping it can hang around at the party long enough to make the ACC championship, and South Florida would just love to wreck somebody’s entire season in December.

Much to consider, much to play out. But at the very least, we know the name of the 2025 national champion is printed above somewhere. Probably. Who even knows anymore?

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