Top storylines for the 2025 college football season: Who’s the next Indiana?

Less than 100 days from now, the 2025 college football season will officially get underway. As the countdown to Week 0 continues, it’s never too early to look ahead to storylines that should be top of mind heading into the new campaign.

Who will be this year’s Indiana? Is this the year James Franklin and the Nittany Lions finally get over the hump? And who are the players in new places we should get to know ahead of kickoff?

FOX Sports college football writers Laken Litman, Michael Cohen and RJ Young answer those questions ahead of the college football season.

Let’s get to it!

More than 3,400 FBS scholarship players entered the transfer portal this past offseason. Name one transfer that you believe will have the biggest impact on his team’s success in 2025?

Laken Litman: Carson Beck. When healthy, Beck can be one of the steadiest, most reliable quarterbacks in the country. He went 24-3 in two seasons as Georgia’s starter and threw for 7,426 yards with 57 touchdowns and 23 turnovers. The end of his tenure in Athens was tough – the last time we saw him on the field was when he injured his elbow during the SEC championship game vs. Texas. The Bulldogs suffered without him, losing 23-10 to Notre Dame in the second round of the College Football Playoff. Had he not been injured, Beck might have led the Bulldogs to another national championship game and likely left for the NFL. Instead, he moved from Athens to Coral Gables and Miami coach Mario Cristobal told reporters at ACC spring meetings that Beck has been cleared for summer workouts after missing spring practices while he rehabbed.

While some might say there are better QBs around the country than Beck, what Miami gets is another experienced quarterback after Cam Ward became the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft. Can he be another Ward? That’s the hope and there is certainly intrigue there. Because he missed spring practices, Beck has yet to throw the ball around with the Hurricanes’ receivers, but that will change between now and a tough season-opener vs. Notre Dame on Aug. 31. 

RJ Young: Oklahoma QB John Mateer has a chance to become as important to the Sooners’ success as Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts were as transfers. After passing for more than 3,100 yards and rushing for over 1,000 — excluding sacks — Mateer showed up in Norman shortly after his offensive coordinator at Washington State last year, Ben Arbuckle, did. The duo will be tasked with helping Oklahoma return to the same winning ways it enjoyed during the entirety of the Lincoln Riley era and for one brilliant season under Brent Venables.

With Oklahoma’s defense firmly in the hands of Venables this year — one of the best defensive play-callers of the playoff era — an electric offense might be all that is needed for OU to take a big step toward competing for championships in the SEC.

Michael Cohen: In the handful of years since widespread transfer portal movement infiltrated college football, the trend that continues to hold true in cycle after cycle is that adding a high-level quarterback can completely rewrite a team’s prospectus for the upcoming season. Consider the 2022 portal class in which Quinn Ewers moved from Ohio State to Texas and Jaxson Dart moved from USC to Ole Miss. Or the 2023 portal class in which Shedeur Sanders followed his father from Jackson State to Colorado and Luke Altmyer moved from Ole Miss to Illinois. Or the 2024 portal class in which Ward relocated from Washington State to Miami, Will Howard jumped from Kansas State to Ohio State and Riley Leonard upgraded from Duke to Notre Dame. All of which is to say that selecting the most impactful transfer for the 2025 cycle is essentially an exercise in quarterback projection — namely, which signal-caller identified the best combination of head coach, offensive coordinator and supporting cast to maximize remaining eligibility. 

RJ’s selection of Mateer, a breakthrough star at Washington State last season, is certainly the wisest choice considering the Cougars’ offensive coordinator, Ben Arbuckle, also moved to Oklahoma and should simplify his quarterback’s transition. But for the sake of variety, another name to watch is former Cal quarterback Fernando Mendoza, now the starter at Indiana. Mendoza is following in the footsteps of former Ohio quarterback Kurtis Rourke, who spearheaded the program’s incredible journey to last year’s College Football Playoff and became a seventh-round pick in the NFL Draft. Rourke’s remarkable success suggests that head coach Curt Cignetti and his staff are adept at both quarterback identification and talent development, both of which bode well for Mendoza. The former Cal product is already accustomed to playing in a Power 4 conference — unlike Rourke, who jumped from the MAC — and threw for over 3,000 yards with 16 touchdowns last season. He should help the Hoosiers reach back-to-back bowl games for just the third time this century. 

Penn State has been a popular pick among the media to win the Big Ten in 2025 and make a deep run in the College Football Playoff. Do you believe this is the year James Franklin and the Nittany Lions can finally get over the hump, and why?

Michael: There are a handful of factors that make it easy to understand why many people are tipping Penn State, which hasn’t won a Big Ten title since 2016, to finally reach the top of the league’s hierarchy this season. The roster retention efforts from head coach James Franklin and his staff secured one of the nation’s strongest nucleuses when veterans Drew Allar (quarterback), Nicholas Singleton (running back), Kaytron Allen (running back), Dani Dennis-Sutton (edge rusher), Zane Durant (defensive tackle) and Zakee Wheatley (safety) all bypassed the NFL Draft for another year with the Nittany Lions. The hiring of defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, who just helped Ohio State win a national championship, gives Franklin arguably the best pair of coordinators in the country, with Andy Kotelnicki settling into Year 2 on the offensive side of the ball. And the Nittany Lions schedule, which features Oregon at home and doesn’t include Michigan for the second consecutive season, sets up favorably for another run at the College Football Playoff.

But it’s difficult to overlook how Penn State’s 2024 season ended: a loss to Notre Dame in the CFP semifinals during which the team’s wide receivers combined to catch zero passes. Such a no-show performance represented the humiliating nadir for a position group that has repeatedly underachieved in recent years, hamstringing — to some extent — Allar’s development at quarterback. Five wide receivers left via the transfer portal following the 2023 season and four more departed after the ’24 campaign in what is beginning to feel like a systemic issue. Newcomers Trebor Pena (Syracuse), Devonte Ross (Troy) and Kyron Hudson (USC) will all be counted on to make an immediate impact for a struggling position group, especially without All-American tight end Tyler Warren to paper over the cracks. But until the Nittany Lions prove they can compete on the perimeter against elite competition, it’s hard to see them getting over the hump in the Big Ten and beyond.  

Laken: The time is certainly now for Penn State. Similar to how a chunk of talent returned to Ohio State last season in order to win a national championship (which the Buckeyes did), Penn State has a lot of guys who came back to school instead of leaving for the NFL because they want to win a title. Quarterback Drew Allar, running backs Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen, plus defensive linemen Dani Dennis-Sutton and Zane Durant are some of the hot names that James Franklin has on his roster this season. Not to mention, Franklin hired defensive coordinator Jim Knowles away from Big Ten rival Ohio State and with him, Knowles brings tons of knowledge that he’s already started imparting on the Nittany Lions on both sides of the ball. Not to mention he’s fresh off winning a national championship and is one of the most sought-after assistants in the country. Penn State also returns offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki, who already has a year in State College under his belt. It helps too that Penn State doesn’t have to play Michigan.

RJ: I refuse to pick a team to win the Big Ten Championship with a head coach who is 1-15 against AP top-five opponents and has lost 12 straight to teams ranked in the top five. The Big Ten has demonstrated it can have as many as three teams ranked in the top five of anybody’s Top 25 rankings by Week 12. And the gap is closing with programs like Indiana and Illinois joining teams at the top. Until Penn State beats a team that we think is one of the five best in the country, let’s pump the brakes on Penn State winning any championship at all.

Indiana followed a 3-9 season in 2023 with an 11-2 campaign in 2024. When looking at the college football national landscape, which team could be this year’s version of Indiana, and why?

RJ Young: It’s never been easier to flip your program’s fortunes year-to-year thanks to the transfer portal and the allowance of immediate eligibility for those transfers. TCU flipped a 5-7 2021 season into a national title runner-up one in 2022. Arizona State and Indiana flipped their 3-9 2023 seasons into 11-2 and 11-3, respectively, with appearances in the 2024 CFP.

It’s difficult to point to a 3-9 team in 2024 and advocate for it to be an 11-win playoff team the next. But the most obvious choice must be Florida State. The Seminoles finished 2-10 a year after finishing 13-1. Mike Norvell fired both his offensive and defensive coordinators from last year and brought in Gus Malzahn and Tony White. 

The Seminoles expect to be productive at the running back position with Roydell Williams and Jaylin Lucas. They added speed on the perimeter with former Tennessee WR Squirrel White and former USC TE Duce Robinson. But their production will depend on just how good the Noles are at QB. Former Boston College QB Thomas Castellanos figures to start Week 1 vs. Alabama, and then we’ll find out just how close or how far away the Noles are from pulling the turnaround.

Michael Cohen: At the heart of Indiana’s spectacular run to the College Football Playoff were a number of important factors that should form the bedrock of any potential search for this year’s version of the Hoosiers. There was a strong transfer portal class anchored by experienced players with track records of production; there was high-level quarterback play from veteran Kurtis Rourke; there was a cushy schedule that only included one ranked opponent during the regular season; and there was a semblance of balance with IU’s offense and defense both ranking among the top 35 nationally by year’s end.

So, who fits the bill this fall? A program like Auburn, which finished 5-7 last season, jumps to the forefront after head coach Hugh Freeze added the eighth-best transfer portal class — including former five-star quarterback Jackson Arnold from Oklahoma — and the eighth-best high school recruiting class in the country. But the depth of talent in the SEC, where seven teams landed in the final AP Poll and three more received votes, makes it unlikely that the Tigers or anyone else from the bottom half of last year’s standings can vault into the upper echelon. The hill is too steep to climb on a week-to-week basis. 

RJ’s choice of Florida State feels like the right pick given just how bad the Seminoles were amid their 2-10 finish in 2024. It would be difficult for a program with that much talent to be any worse than what it was last fall. Once again, head coach Mike Norvell swung big in the transfer portal with a 23-man class ranked sixth nationally behind LSU, Texas Tech, Miami, Ole Miss and Oregon — a who’s who on the list of programs suspected to have the deepest NIL pockets. Former USC wide receiver Duce Robinson (No. 8 transfer), former Nebraska edge rusher James Williams (No. 28 transfer), former Wake Forest offensive lineman Luke Petitbon (No. 68 transfer), and former Houston cornerback Jeremiah Wilson (No. 78 transfer) headline a group that includes six players ranked among the top 150 overall. Former Boston College quarterback Tommy Castellanos is expected to take over following the subpar efforts of DJ Uiagalelei in 2024. A season-opening non-conference matchup with Alabama on Aug. 30 might be the toughest game on Florida State’s schedule. It’s not outside the realm of possibility to think the Seminoles could rebound this fall. 

Laken Litman: I’m going with North Carolina. Why not? With so many offseason off-field headlines centering around Bill Belichick – he has a new book out and a 24-year-old girlfriend – it would be the perfect story if he turned the Tar Heels around. The team went 6-7 a year ago in its first season after losing star quarterback Drake Maye and then fired coach Mack Brown. In the offseason, more than 70 players left the program, but 40 joined via the transfer portal.

The Tar Heels lost some good players to the NFL and at this point in the year, we don’t know how the new guys are gelling (Belichick hasn’t made players available to the media). Among the transfers include former South Alabama quarterback Gio Lopez, who completed 66% of his passes for 2,559 yards with 18 touchdowns and five interceptions as a freshman starter last year. UNC also signed eight offensive linemen, six of which were starters at their respective previous programs. There’s not as much experience defensively, but don’t discount the Tar Heels. Regardless of where the talent level is now, Belichick is a six-time Super Bowl winner and is one of the best at developing players. It wouldn’t be so farfetched to think this team will be better on the field than it looks on paper.

And while North Carolina has to play Clemson (Oct. 4), it doesn’t have to play Miami or SMU in conference play.

Laken Litman covers college football, college basketball and soccer for FOX Sports. She previously wrote for Sports Illustrated, USA Today and The Indianapolis Star. She is the author of “Strong Like a Woman,” published in spring 2022 to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Follow her at @LakenLitman.

RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast “The Number One College Football Show.” Follow him at @RJ_Young.

Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.

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