Three Weeks In, Everything We Thought We Knew In College Football Is Wrong

Congratulations, college football fanatics! We have officially made it through a quarter of the season!

Don't worry about those white knuckles, they'll go away in January.

After yesterday's slate, we are three games into the 2025 campaign, and it's safe to say no one knows anything.

Based on what we thought heading into the season, it was a forgone conclusion that Texas would win the SEC, Clemson would dominate the ACC, and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish were a shoo-in to make another deep playoff run.

Boy were we wrong!

It would appear we overestimated all three of these teams, among plenty of others.

Let's start with Texas.

While the Longhorns are still technically undefeated in conference play and have all their goals in front of them, the centerpiece to their championship run, quarterback Arch Manning, isn't quite the force of nature we were promised.

Remember when Texas and Florida were set to play each other in the first week of October, with the matchup being billed as a duel of sensational signal callers between Manning and Gators QB DJ Lagway?

Woof!

Like I said, the Longhorns still have plenty of time to turn this thing around, but they're going to need a different Arch Manning moving forward.

How about Clemson?

We heard all offseason from plenty of pundits (myself included, unfortunately) about how dominant the Tigers' front seven was in addition to their superstar quarterback and bevy of talented wide receivers.

After three weeks, Clemson looks like a shell of the team we were told about all summer, culminating in an upset loss to a super-physical Georgia Tech team.

Road losses to a top-five LSU team and a criminally underrated Yellow Jackets squad are somewhat excusable, but just a week ago, Dabo and company were slap-boxing with an undermanned Troy team, needing a second-half comeback to avoid being winless on the season.

Clemson was ranked fourth to start the year, and when the AP Poll drops in a few hours, there is a good chance the Tigers fall out of the Top-25.

Hardly the ACC favorite we all thought they'd be.

I haven't forgotten about you either, Notre Dame.

While one-possession losses to Miami and Texas A&M are nothing to hang your head over, the Fighting Irish have left themselves with zero margin for error thanks to an insanely frontloaded schedule and not many more opportunities for quality wins to be had.

The Irish will likely have to win the rest of their games and hope for a few casualties around them to even sniff the College Football Playoff this season.

Anyone who thought they were missing the postseason in July likely would've been roundly mocked, yet here we are.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, though.

We haven't even discussed Heisman hopefuls like Lanoris Sellers, Avery Johnson, or the aforementioned Lagway tanking their stocks early in the season, nor have we had the chance to talk about teams like Arizona State and Boise State watching their playoff aspirations take a nosedive with losses to unranked teams.

These next two and a half months will be some of the craziest times college football has offered us in quite a while, so take it all in and enjoy it while it lasts.

And just a reminder as we move forward, no one knows anything.