5 Reasons Why We'll Remember the Dramatic 2025 College Football Season

It’s probably safe to say that this was one of the more eventful and interesting college football seasons in recent memory. No. 1 Indiana capped a perfect 16-0 season by beating No. 10 Miami, 27-21, on Monday night to win the program's first national championship.

By the time the Hoosiers' title celebrations wrap up, it will nearly be February. College football lasts six months in this 12-team College Football Playoff world. Given that half a year has flown by since Week 0, it can be challenging to recall what happened back at the beginning of the season. 

That’s why we want to take a minute here and reminisce about some of the unforgettable moments. 

With that, here are five things we’ll remember from a wild 2025 college football season:

1. Indiana’s remarkable national championship season

If they remade the movie Hoosiers and based it off this team, who would play Curt Cignetti? While that will be an entertaining debate for fans, it’s really remarkable what Indiana accomplished this year.  

In just his second year as the Hoosiers’ head coach — and with a different transfer quarterback than he had last year — Cignetti took a former Big Ten cellar dweller and turned it into a national championship program. And one that looks like it’s here to stay.

"We won the national championship at Indiana University," Cignetti told the broadcast after the title game. "It can be done."

Last season, people thought it might have been a fluke, with Cignetti bringing players and coaches from James Madison with him to Indiana and having immediate success. In 2024, the Hoosiers went 11-1 in the regular season — their only loss coming against eventual national champion Ohio State — and made the program’s first-ever CFP. In 2025, Cignetti one-upped himself by leading Indiana to an undefeated season and the school’s first national title. He did it with Cal transfer quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who won the Heisman Trophy. He created a team that had an explosive offense and a menacing defense. A disciplined group that rarely made mistakes — turnovers and penalties were hardly issues. 

He created what an ideal football team might look like, and what makes it all the more extraordinary is that entering the 2025 season, Indiana had the most losses of any FBS program in history with 715 over 136 seasons. 

2. All the Lane Kiffin drama

This was one of the biggest stories of the season. 

Amid Ole Miss’ historic year, Lane Kiffin spurred his team for the head coaching vacancy at LSU. The decision was made following Ole Miss’ final regular season game, a 38-19 win over rival Mississippi State, and just before the start of the playoff. Kiffin said publicly that he wanted to finish the season with Ole Miss and coach the team through the CFP, but athletics director Keith Carter denied that request.

There was plenty of hoopla leading up to Kiffin’s departure. Would he stay at Ole Miss or leave for LSU? For weeks, he tweeted about making tough decisions and told reporters that he was planning to consult his mentors, Pete Carroll and Nick Saban. Once he finally decided to leave for Baton Rouge, all hell broke loose. Players and fans were angry and called Kiffin out. 

[ALL-TIME TURNAROUNDS: Where do Indiana, Patriots, Cubs Rank?]

But the team stayed the course. Ole Miss won its first two CFP games under new coach Pete Golding, who was previously the defensive coordinator, which included an upset of SEC foe Georgia in the quarterfinal. With the Rebels preparing to play Miami in the Fiesta Bowl semifinal, reports emerged that some of the assistants who were planning to follow Kiffin to LSU would not be able to stick around for the rest of the CFP.

Despite the turmoil, Ole Miss ended the 2025 season 13-2 and made a deep run in its first CFP appearance. It will go down as one of the greatest seasons in school history, and while Kiffin deserves major credit for overhauling a program over six seasons, their impressive postseason was inspired in spite of him.

3. More coaching chaos, which started early

Kiffin wasn’t the only coach to make splashy headlines this season. Plenty of other coaches endured their fair share of drama.

There was James Franklin, who Penn State fired after he led the program for 12 years. The Nittany Lions entered the season as a favorite to win the national championship, given how much talent decided to return instead of going to the NFL last year. They started 3-0 before losing three straight games to Oregon, UCLA and Northwestern, the latter two being shocking upsets. Despite the struggles, Franklin’s dismissal came as a surprise to the college football world. Penn State was less than a year removed from a CFP semifinal appearance. But it also struggled to win big games and that factored into the equation when athletics director Pat Kraft made the decision to let him go. Franklin wasn’t unemployed long — Virginia Tech hired him a month later.

A few weeks after that, Brian Kelly experienced a similar fate. LSU was supposed to be a title contender this year, too, but underperformed and so Kelly was ousted in October. His termination became a headache when Kelly sued LSU over his $54 million buyout, claiming the school tried to fire him for cause to get out of paying him. In the end, the dispute was resolved and Kelly will receive everything he is owed.

Meanwhile, Michigan had to abruptly fire its coach this season. Sherrone Moore was fired for cause in December for having an inappropriate relationship with a staff member, which was followed by his arrest for felony third-degree home invasion, stalking and breaking and entering of the staffer’s home. It was a wild and unexpected turn of events for Moore, who was named head coach after Jim Harbaugh left Michigan for the NFL. Assistant Biff Poggi was the interim coach during the Wolverines bowl game, and the school later hired longtime Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham to be its next coach.

4. Notre Dame got left out of CFP

Everyone will remember what happened when Notre Dame was left out of the CFP in favor of Miami.

To take it back to the beginning of the season, the Fighting Irish lost their first two games to Miami and Texas A&M by a combined four points before winning the rest of the games on their schedule. They appeared firmly in the top 10 toward the end of the season… that is, until they weren’t. The Hurricanes, who on Monday played in their first national championship game since the 2002 season, had not been ranked ahead of the Fighting Irish until the final rankings, which caused all kinds of commotion.

[2026 CFP TITLE ODDS: Indiana, Ohio State Open as Favorites]

In response to its CFP exclusion, Notre Dame announced that the team would not participate in a bowl game. Naturally, this caused backlash around the country. Athletics director Pete Bevacqua accused the ACC of favoring Miami over Notre Dame and criticized the conference multiple times (Notre Dame are ACC members in all sports except football). This became so dramatic that Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark publicly called Bevacqua out, saying that he was "totally out of bounds in his approach."

It probably doesn’t help Notre Dame’s case that Miami ended up playing for a national championship – and came close to knocking off an undefeated Indiana team. But it’s also not fair to judge the committee based on how teams performed in the CFP as they are supposed to fill out the 12-team field based on what happened during the season.

5. Transfer portal quarterbacks reign in CFP

If you want to go deep in the CFP, it seems like the key is to have a transfer quarterback. Of the 12 teams who played in the playoff this year, eight had transfer quarterbacks. Six transfer quarterbacks played in the quarterfinals, four in the semifinals, and then both Miami and Indiana were led by transfer quarterbacks in the national championship game.

This isn’t surprising, it’s just hard evidence that this is the way forward. It’s not going to be often that a high school quarterback recruit commits to one school, plays his entire career there, and goes on to win a national championship with that same team. Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza never could have envisioned this path for himself. He started his career at Cal and then transferred to Indiana where he became a star, winning the Heisman Trophy and a national championship. Plus, he could very well end up being the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. (The Las Vegas Raiders, who have the No. 1 overall pick, had a presence at the national championship game with owner Mark Davis and minority owner Tom Brady in the house.)

There are some cases where a quarterback might commit to a program and see it through. Take Texas Tech quarterback Behren Morton, who loves his school and is passionate about turning it into a winning program. Or Arch Manning, who could leave Texas, but he does not want to. Those scenarios will likely become less common while the Mendoza and Carson Beck situations (Beck left Georgia for Miami ahead of the season) will be more commonplace.

Laken Litman covers college football, college basketball and soccer for FOX Sports. 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.

Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account, and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily!