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CFB insider drops 2025 national championship predictions after latest preseason AP poll rankings with Georgia on top

Coach Kirby Smart's Georgia Bulldogs are the No. 1-ranked team in the AP preseason Top 25 Poll for the second consecutive year. Last season, they failed to reach the College Football Playoff despite being the favorites when they were beaten in the Southeastern Conference championship game by retired Alabama Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban's team.

Coach Smart's team received 46 first-place votes, totaling 1,532 points ahead of the Ohio State Buckeyes, who had 15 first-place votes for a total of 1,490 points.

One statistic might stand out for Bulldogs fans. The last 18 out of 20 teams to be ranked No. 1 in the AP polls did not win the national championship during the season of the ranking.

Action Network's analyst Brett McMurphy dropped his national champion predictions on X after the preseason AP poll with Georgia as No. 1 was released.

"This year's champ? Either No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Ohio State, No. 3 Oregon, No. 4 Texas, No. 5 Alabama, No. 6 Ole Miss or No. 7 Notre Dame. Since 2004, every national champ ranked among AP preseason’s top 7, except for FSU (2013, started 11) & Auburn (2010, started 22)," McMurphy tweeted.

The teams following the Georgia Bulldogs on the poll are Ohio State, Oregon, Texas, Alabama, Ole Miss and Notre Dame.

The Georgia Bulldogs have a loaded schedule

Coach Kirby Smart is seen as the face of college football now that his former mentor Nick Saban has retired and he has the resume to back it up. The Georgia Bulldogs have one of the toughest schedules to maneuver during the coming season.

The Bulldogs will travel to Austin to face the Texas Longhorns, to Oxford to face the Ole Miss Rebels and to Tuscaloosa to face their old foes, coach Kalen DeBoer's Alabama Crimson Tide. All three teams are ranked in the top 10 of the AP Top 25.

During the SEC media days last month, Smart who has had trouble with some of his players being arrested for various offenses categorically said that he did not derive motivation from past failures and achievements.

"We’re dealing with new challenges this year," Smart said. "We don’t have a chip on our shoulder in terms of people trying to use that as motivation.
"I’ve never used a failure from the previous year as motivation and never used the success of a previous year as motivation; we won’t do that this year. That’s not who we are. We want to recreate ourselves to stay in the best light we can."

There is more room for a stumble in the current college football climate with an expanded 12-team CFP, which the Georgia Bulldogs and Kirby Smart would have welcomed last year but their schedule is still full of trap games.

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