Offseason winners in college football: 10 programs off to fast starts ahead of 2025 season

It feels like the 2024 college football season just finished and yet spring practice is already here. 

While more and more programs are ditching the traditional spring games, the spring slate still offers an early peek at what offseason moves should pay off and where improvements are still necessary. 

With that in mind, it felt like the right time to assess the programs that have fared the best this offseason in building toward the 2025 season and beyond. We aren’t counting any programs that made head coaching changes in this exercise – so no Bill Belichick and North Carolina – but instead highlighting the schools that did the best job of retaining and adding player, coaching and personnel talent in recent months. 

There is still a lot that can change between now and August, particularly with a spring portal period to come, but here are the 10 programs that have fared best so far. 

Bringing Ryan Grubb back in the fold – assuming he coaches a game this time – was a huge win for Kalen DeBoer after a disappointing 9-4 first season at Alabama. Grubb, who Nick Saban badly wanted to hire on his last staff at Alabama, brings strong knowledge of DeBoer’s offense and the kind of creative play-calling that was missing last season. Alabama should send Seattle a thank you card for moving on from Grubb after only a single season as the Seahawks’ offensive coordinator. We would have liked to see Alabama be a bit more aggressive in the transfer portal but look to have added at least a few likely contributors in Miami receiver Isaiah Horton, Colorado linebacker Nikhai Hill-Green and Utah cornerback Cameron Calhoun. 

After a disastrous 5-7 2024 season, Hugh Freeze had to be aggressive about upgrading the roster ahead of a critical Year 3….

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/offseason-winners-in-college-football-10-programs-off-to-fast-starts-ahead-of-2025-season/

Author : John Talty

Publish date : 2025-03-02 14:56:00

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