ESPN reveals final update to preseason Top 25 college football rankings

Saturday will mark one full week before the official return of college football, and sports fans everywhere are counting down the minutes. The 2025 college football season preseason ends and regular season formally begins at 12 pm ET, Aug. 23, from Dublin, Ireland, where No. 17 Kansas State will take on No. 22 Iowa State in a highly anticipated Top 25 showdown between potential Big 12 contenders on ESPN.

In the meantime, Ranking Season remains in full swing after the Associated Press released its 2025 Preseason Top 25 Poll on Monday, which formally crowned Texas as the nation’s consensus No. 1 team. The week before, USA Today’s Coaches Preseason Top 25 Poll also tabbed the Longhorns as the country’s top-rated college football program ahead of the 2025 season.

Of course, not all rankings are equal, and ESPN delivered an interesting one with Thursday’s release of its final 2025 Preseason SP+ Rankings, which is an analytically derived “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency.” As ESPN’s Bill Connelly explains: “It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a resume ranking.”

With that in mind, check out ESPN’s final Preseason SP+ rankings ahead of the 2025 college football season:

To finish reading for free, visit On3