
Betting Stuff: Win totals for the 2025 season to bet on right now
The 2024 season is now behind us. And with no such thing as a true “offseason” in college football media, the attention immediately shifts to 2025. Who deserves to open the season inside the top 10? Who will surprise? Who will disappoint? Who will win it all? We waste no time getting to these discussions and that’s partially because some of our go-to Ohio betting apps waste no time setting the market for next season.
At FanDuel, futures are already posted for a number of categories. I’ll get to the conference championship odds in the coming days. Below, you’ll find a few of the win totals I’m laying right now. The list of available teams isn’t an exhaustive one. There are a few sleepers I think might carry some value later this summer, depending on where their totals land. But, for now, we have big-name schools to ponder.
Here are 5 worth targeting.
Clemson over 9.5 wins (+126 via FanDuel)
Implied odds here suggest it is more likely than not Clemson closes a third consecutive regular season with single-digit wins. The Tigers won double-digit games in the regular season every year from 2015-19, but they’ve done it only once since. Knowing that, this still feels like immense value on the Tigers. The ACC is trending downward and Clemson misses Miami during the regular season next fall. Florida State, Duke, and SMU all come to Memorial Stadium. Road conference games include North Carolina, Boston College, Georgia Tech, and Louisville. Clemson could lose both of its games against SEC competition — LSU at home on Aug. 30, South Carolina on the road on Nov. 29 — and still hit this over. Right now, I’d favor Clemson over LSU slightly. (And Vegas agrees. Clemson is a 2.5-point favorite at FanDuel.)
Clemson has several things working in its favor next season. First, it has a veteran quarterback, something that this year’s Playoff suggests is quite valuable. None of the 4 College Football Playoff semifinalists had truly exceptional quarterbacks, but all of them had experienced quarterbacks. Cade Klubnik might be both. He ended the 2024 season with a career-best 78.7 QBR, which was a top-15 mark nationally. He also ranked 11th among FBS passers in EPA. Klubnik figured out how to play on the road, and promising pass-catchers emerged on the outside. In addition to Klubnik’s return in 2025, Clemson will also bring back each of its top 3 receivers and 4 of its 5 starters on the offensive line, including right tackle Blake Miller, who will be a fourth-year starter in 2025. Coordinator Garrett Riley will also be back in what will be his third season with Klubnik. Clemson finished the 2024 season ranked 30th nationally in Game on Paper’s opponent-adjusted EPA-per-play metric. There’s every reason to expect Clemson can be a top-20 offense next year.
And the defense upgraded at coordinator, bringing Tom Allen over from Penn State. Allen has coached excellent defenses everywhere he’s been, including at Indiana. Clemson also dipped into the portal to secure reinforcements on the edge of the defensive line.
In past years, Clemson has been a preseason darling and an in-season disappointment. The Tigers were waxed out of the gates in 2024 and left for dead, but they surged to an ACC title and a CFP appearance. They can absolutely take another step in 2025.
Florida over 6.5 wins (-138 via FanDuel)
Florida won 7 games against a bear of a schedule in 2024, will be better in 2025, and still has a win total hovering around .500. Oddsmakers are begging us to soak up the sunshine and I will happily oblige. The Gators will bring back one of the most exciting quarterbacks in the country, who will have a full offseason to work with the 1s and build momentum into what will be his true sophomore season. DJ Lagway was a dynamo in 2024, a player who flashed serious potential and constantly hunted the splash plays. He’ll be surrounded by weapons in 2025 — Eugene Wilson III, J. Michael Sturdivant, Jadan Baugh, and Ja’Kobi Jackson are all excellent — and will have one of the best centers in the sport to anchor the offensive line. Key pieces are coming back on defense, but health will be most important on that side of the ball. The Gators got crushed by injuries late in the 2024 campaign and still closed strong. The schedule is still treacherous, but I think the offseason vibes will make a world of difference heading into the season. Florida’s coach was on the hot seat and its quarterback spent the entire lead-up to the season as the No. 2. This time around, Billy Napier has firm footing and Lagway gets to spend the winter, spring, and summer months taking command of this team. Florida stumbled out of the gates and I don’t think that happens again.
Iowa State over 7.5 wins (+108 via FanDuel)
In 2024, Iowa State won a program-record 11 games. In 2025, guys are running it back to chase the program’s first conference championship in more than a century. Matt Campbell, quarterback Rocco Becht, running backs Carson Hansen and Abu Sama III, and a slew of key figures in the secondary all return for next season. Being the quarterback, Becht is obviously the big one. He threw for 3,505 yards, ran for 318, and produced 33 total touchdowns in 2024. But he didn’t exactly take a step forward as a passer. His completion percentage was lower than the year prior, his yards-per-throw clip was worse, and he had 20 turnover-worthy throws compared to just 11 the year prior. Iowa State was excellent in the secondary last season and that should carry over with what returns. The Cyclones were explosive on offense, though not ultra-efficient. And they lose their top 2 receivers. But they added former ECU wideout Chase Sowell, a 6-foot-4 pass-catcher who is a big-play creator on the outside. Between Hansen, Sama, and Becht on the ground, Iowa State might flip in 2025 to a team with a bit more down-to-down efficiency. Ultimately, I think we’ll see this team take a slight step back, but the floor isn’t going to fall out.
Indiana under 8.5 wins (-150 via FanDuel)
Regression to the mean is coming for Indiana, and it is coming with a vengeance. Kurtis Rourke was the most valuable quarterback in college football this past season, per Game on Paper. He led the nation in EPA per dropback, while also finishing third nationally in ESPN’s Total QBR metric. The Hoosiers also say goodbye to their top tailback and 2 of their top 3 tacklers. Coach Curt Cignetti has chosen to reload via the portal once again, bringing in nearly 20 transfers to supplement the roster. But I think there are a couple of differences here. A bulk of the transfer class last fall was made up of Cignetti guys from James Madison. There was a culture transplant, so to speak. Now, Cignetti is adding to the mixture in a new way. That could spell bumps in the road. I’m also not sold on their quarterback situation being as good. Cal transfer Fernando Mendoza is fine, but Rourke was excellent. And though Indiana’s nonconference schedule is once again Charmin-soft, the Hoosiers face Illinois, Iowa away from home, Oregon away from home, and Penn State away from home. The Hoosiers were overmatched by the more physical teams they faced in 2024, and they might be a degree or 2 worse in 2025. Against a significantly tougher schedule, it’s just hard to imagine another statistically dominant year.
LSU under 8.5 wins (-102 via FanDuel)
A question I’m left wondering following the national championship game: If not for the existence of a $50-million buyout, would Brian Kelly be guaranteed to make it through a 2025 season that didn’t end with a Playoff berth? What if LSU goes 7-5? Is Kelly still around? Brian Kelly had a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback who has gone on to author maybe the greatest rookie season in NFL history and 2 wide receivers who became instant-impact weapons in the NFL and he ended the year in the ReliaQuest Bowl. LSU dipped to 8 wins during the 2024 regular season. It was undone by Texas A&M after the Aggies swapped a statue for a runner at quarterback. It was blasted by Alabama. It lost to Florida. It lost to a mediocre USC team. The overtime win over Ole Miss or the referee-aided win over South Carolina are all that stands between us and a conversation about Kelly’s future already. Three years in, does anyone really know if Kelly is made for this?
Getting Garrett Nussmeier and Whit Weeks back are 2 huge moves for LSU going into the new season. And the Tigers have hit the portal hard to put together a top-end transfer class. The portal pieces on defense should make a difference. LSU has added depth at key spots with the portal. More than anything on that side of the football, it needs Harold Perkins to be healthy and effective in whatever role he has next fall.
But having more talent than the other guys — or, at the bare minimum, equal talent — hasn’t really been LSU’s problem under Kelly. They’ve been out-coached. They’ve been out-schemed. They’ve been beaten by more disciplined teams. The Tigers open at Clemson. They play Florida, Ole Miss on the road, South Carolina, and Texas A&M all before Halloween. What happens if LSU has 2 losses before the bye week on Oct. 4? Depending on how the first 2 months of the season go, LSU could be playing a game in Tuscaloosa on Nov. 8 that, with a loss, officially kills any path to the CFP. In Year 4 under Kelly, LSU is supposed to be competing for a national championship, not flopping around in the middle of the SEC. At nearly even odds, I see some juice in a spot where the potential for drama is very real.