College Football Playoff bracket: College basketball experts predict 2025 national champion from 12-team field

No bracket bangs as hard as the annual 68-team NCAA Tournament every March. Period. But this year's 12-team College Football Playoff bracket brings loads of appeal, even to us hoops scribes whose experiences with mayhem and madness are largely synonymous with the months of March and April, not December and January. How could you look at this bracket and not be excited about what lies ahead over the next five weeks?

We can barely contain our excitement. It's like Christmas landing early. Perhaps it's just the sight of a fresh bracket -- which we darn well know how to fill out! -- but in any case we are instinctively itching to spill ink on paper and make picks. Completing brackets is in our blood.

So we did exactly that below with every college hoops expert veering into the college football realm to do what we do best: filling out brackets. As you'll see below, some of us have been so accustomed to madness that we know nothing else but chaos. (Looking at you, Gary Parrish.) But there are plenty of other upset picks elsewhere. And of note: None of us picked the No. 1 seed, Indiana, to go the distance. 

Here's how our brackets shook out below as we picked every game from Friday through Jan. 19 -- when a champion will be crowned in Miami.

College Football Playoff bracket picks

Gary Parrish

I love everything about what's happening right now at Indiana. The Hoosiers have the Heisman winner, the AP Coach of the Year and the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff. It's awesome -- all of it. And if IU wins three more games to finish as a 16-0 national champion, man, that would be an all-time great college football story.

I'd enjoy seeing it.

But I'm taking Oregon to upset Indiana in the national semifinals -- and then I have the Ducks beating Georgia in the championship game. So, yeah, I have a Big Ten team winning this -- just not the Big  Ten champion. I obviously don't cover college football the way I cover college basketball, so I'm less familiar (on a personal level) with most of the coaches. But, from a distance, Oregon's Dan Lanning seems like a future Hall of Famer who could win multiple national titles -- and the prediction here is that his first, and Oregon's first, will arrive Jan. 19. Pick: Oregon

Matt Norlander

As the most reliable bracket picker at CBS Sports of this generation (don't fact-check that), I maintain that making bracket picks is as much about trying to be accurate as it is about leaning into the chaos. It's just more fun that way. I promise you three things will transpire over 11 games in the next month: 

1. We will have upsets.

2. We will see some amazing finishes.

3. The top four teams aren't going to all make the semifinals. 

So, with that in mind, I'm leaning into the Big Ten to take this for a third straight year, and for Ohio State to win back-to-back titles. The Buckeyes lost to Indiana, and I love the IU story, but the talent compilation in Columbus is ridiculous. Oregon's going to lose again to OSU, like last year, but the Ducks look like a really fun underdog -- as much as they can be one -- in this bracket. As for the first-round games, my Tulane pick is straight up wish-casting a non-Power-Four team to take at least one victory in the CFP after a lot of the slander that's been tossed around in the past week and a half. Plus, it's just dumb that the CFP committee opted to have a rematch between Ole Miss and Tulane when it could have tweaked the seeding on either side to avoid this. 

One last thing: I'm just as much anti-expansion with the CFP as I am with the NCAA Tournament. We don't need more than 12 teams in this thing. The perfect balance between regular season importance and postseason inclusion. Pick: Ohio State

Kyle Boone

As a champion of the single-elimination bracket -- and therefore a mayhem enthusiast -- my brain can take cues from my heart on picks and lead me toward siding with underdogs. So, imagine my own surprise when I filled out my bracket and it was almost all chalk.

That's because this meaty bracket just feels like the precursor to the two best teams all season -- Indiana and Ohio State -- eventually meeting again with the championship on the line.

I'm taking the Buckeyes when my picks inevitably shake out as such.

No team has the talent nor the depth of Ohio State. Combine that with a desire for revenge and a chance to repeat, and you've got the most lethal team in the field. They're going back-to-back and the opportunity to do it with a taste of redemption at the end would make this all the more sweet. Pick: Ohio State

Cameron Salerno

The Big Ten Championship Game featured a rare matchup between the No. 1- and No. 2-ranked teams. Although the stakes were high, in the grand scheme of the bracket, it didn't matter much. And that's a good thing, because the only way those two teams can meet again is for the title next month in Miami.

Indiana and Ohio State are the best two teams in college football and on a collision course to meet each other for the title. I will give Ohio State the slight edge in a rematch to repeat as champions. The ultimate X-Factor for the Buckeyes to repeat is Jeremiah Smith. After not winning the Biletnikoff Award as the nation's best receiver, I expect him to show why he's the best player at the position in the sport during the stretch run. Pick: Ohio State

Isaac Trotter

Oregon has everything it needs to win a title. An offense that generates big plays in its sleep and doesn't shoot itself in the foot. A defense that gets off the field in a hurry. A dialed-in head coach in Dan Lanning, who is both an expert game-planner and a no-nonsense, rah-rah guy. A sharp offensive coordinator in Will Stein, who has a mind-meld with a precise quarterback in Dante Moore. This roster has also recruited at the level that every national champion has to do, and it's won football games this year with offense, defense or even in the frigid Iowa City downpour.

This path is unequivocally brutal. James Madison has no chance, but Texas Tech in the quarterfinals? Woof, but winnable. No. 1 Indiana could await next. Yeah, I'll take Lanning in a rematch. Ohio State, the reigning champion, in the final? Good lord, what have I signed up for?

Sco Ducks. Pick: Oregon