CFB's most mysterious title race since 2016, plus AP Top 25 notes
Today in college football news, the trees outside of Appalachian State's stadium are as lovely as expected. I forgot to take a photo for you.
Here's a fun thing you can do with sportsbook odds, even if you don't wager on them: use them to figure out implied probabilities. When Vegas says a team has 2-to-1 odds of winning, a calculator tells us that equates to about a 33.3 percent chance.
(Yes, Stanford alumni, that was a really simple example. Some of us failed algebra more than once.)
Using that, it's easy to notice something rare going on in in 2025's national title odds, when compared to the past decade.
Why the unusual trepidation? Why the lack of a truly clear favorite? Whenever something weird happens these days in college football, we can just blame it on something called The Transfer Portal And Bigger Playoff And NIL, then grumble about wishing things would go back to the way they were when we were 17, right? Wait, wasn't modernity supposed to make CFB's bullies more impervious, rather than less? Nevermind.
Lots of top teams happen to be starting over at QB all at once, and it's partly due to something more definitively 2020s than even The Transfer Portal And Bigger Playoff And NIL:
Among the QBs starting for the preseason AP poll's top 10 teams (more below), only No. 4 Clemson's Cade Klubnik and No. 9 LSU's Garrett Nussmeier feel like sure things, though there's a good case for No. 2 Penn State's Drew Allar putting it together with a revamped WR corps or for No. 1 Texas' Arch Manning being a Manning.
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And that's how you end up with a bunch of legit contenders, but no standout favorite, which should make for a nicely chaotic season at the top.
(By the way: Wanna know the three biggest preseason favorites of the past decade? Scroll to the bottom. Engagement!)
🏜️ Arizona has trees, actually. Read up on the decades-long Camp Tontozona tradition that turned the 'misfit' Sun Devils into Big 12 champs.
📺 Whenever 'NFL RedZone' is in the news (most recently because of a big ESPN deal), everyone will once again wish there were a college football version. Dan Shanoff explains five reasons it ain't happening. (I've found YouTube TV's mostly configurable quadboxes to be a decent compromise.)
🐘 Alabama's new starting quarterback is indeed Ty Simpson, one of those numerous mystery QBs mentioned above. No. 47 in QB Tiers.
🌀 'Every year, we all have a brand-new team and a brand-new roster,' Tulane coach Jon Sumrall said. 'That's not just me. That's everybody.' Five ways the coaches at the (semi-unofficial) second level of CFB are adapting to the portal era.
🅾️ A truly harrowing question: Is Oklahoma in danger of becoming the new Nebraska? (Probably not.)
🐴 One of this season's biggest stories: What's next for Florida State after a 2-10 record that's still hard to believe? Matt Baker on the Noles' latest overhaul.
In the closest AP preseason vote since 1998 (when Ohio State outranked Florida State), Texas ranks No. 1 ahead of Penn State, partly thanks to receiving just two more first-place votes in the poll released yesterday. (Unlike the Coaches Poll, Ohio State ranks No. 3 instead of No. 2, but as noted last week, that still means Texas-Ohio State on Aug. 30 will rank as the biggest season-opening game ever.)
The full top 25 is here, led by your reminder that the Horns had never been preseason No. 1 until now:
'Texas is the 24th school to be preseason No. 1. Oklahoma, the Longhorns' Red River rivals, has the record with 10 appearances at No. 1 since the preseason poll started in 1950. Alabama has been preseason No. 1 nine times and Ohio State eight.'
And as expected, it's the highest preseason ranking since 1997 for Penn State, since 1998 for No. 11 Arizona State, since 1990 for No. 12 Illinois and since 1985 for No. 16 SMU — plus No. 8 Alabama's lowest since 2008. Somebody should put out another poll next week, so I can reuse this paragraph again.
More Top 25:
As always, email me about whatever at untilsaturday@theathletic.com. Oh right, that trivia I promised you: Betting markets gave 2018 Bama, 2020 Clemson and 2022 Bama roughly 34.5 percent odds to win national titles. None of them did.
Last week's most-clicked: Of course it was 'The Sports Gossip Show' talking about their curious encounters with Jordon Hudson.
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