Ohio State is No. 1 in the latest Ohio State Football Ranking, and Sports put the Buckeyes at the top of an updated top 25 list after the 2025 campaign. The move leaves Alabama near the summit as the offseason reshuffle begins, but Ohio State sits alone at the front.
That placement is not built on one season. It rests on a run that has made Ohio State the Bowl Subdivision gold standard: 165-21 since 2012, at least 10 wins in every full season but one since 2005, and a 2024 championship under Ryan Day that made him the program’s third full-time coach in a row to win it all. In a sport where heavyweights can fade quickly, that kind of consistency is exactly why the Buckeyes are viewed as the envy of the country, inside and outside the Big Ten.
Sports did not just stop at the top spot. Alabama stayed near the top with 13 national championships split across the two major wire services, while Georgia kept climbing, Notre Dame remained in the hunt for a championship and Texas was framed as the kind of program built for the NIL era, with elite high school talent and the financial backing to keep it coming. LSU also remains part of the conversation, not least because it is the only program with three coaches winning a national championship in this millennium, even as Brian Kelly was fired after winning 71% of his games there.
That is the friction in the ranking: the sport keeps changing, but Ohio State keeps looking like the one program that can absorb the churn and stay at the center of it. The list is an offseason snapshot, not a final verdict, yet the message is clear enough. Until another team proves it can match the Buckeyes’ run of winning, Ohio State will remain the standard everyone else is measured against.
