The 2025 college football season starts in earnest with the Week 1 college football schedule, with Thursday games now in the books, but the action still running through Monday. The highlight contests are ranked matchups involving Texas vs. Ohio State (-1) and LSU vs. Clemson (-4) on Saturday, with Notre Dame vs. Miami (+3) then taking place on Sunday. While there are slim Week 1 college football lines for those games, others have much larger college football spreads such as No. 2 Penn State vs. Nevada (+43.5) and USC vs. Missouri State (+36.5).

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The slate concludes on Labor Day as Bill Belichick makes his college football coaching debut as TCU comes to down. The Tar Heels are 3.5-point home underdogs in the latest Week 1 college football odds, with the over/under at 56.5. (see more college football lines right here). 

Before making any college football picks for those games or others in Week 1, be sure to see what the SportsLine Projection Model has to say. 

The model simulates every FBS game 10,000 times. Since its inception, it has generated a betting profit of well over $2,000 for $100 players on its top-rated college spread football picks, and was a profitable 27-16 combined on money-line and over/under picks in 2024. Anyone following could have seen impressive returns.

Now, it has studied the latest college football odds (see the latest college football lines for each matchup this week on our college football odds page), simulated every single play for every Week 1 game, and the results are in. 

One of the college picks the model is high on during Week 1: No. 8 Alabama (-14) cruises to a blowout win over Florida State at 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday. The Tide are riding a 23-game win streak in season openers which is the second-longest active streak in the country. They are also an astounding 63-1 in regular season non-conference games since 2008, with Kalen DeBoer winning by an average of 48 points in his three such contests in his first year at Bama. The model projects Alabama to win by over two touchdowns and cover well over 50% of the time.

Another prediction: UCLA (+5.5) stays within the spread at home versus Utah at 11 p.m. ET on Saturday. These former Pac-12 rivals last met in the Rose Bowl Stadium in 2022 in which the Bruins protected home turf with a 10-point win. UCLA had a strong finish last season, going 4-2 down the stretch and then landed arguably the biggest of quarterback transfers in former Tennessee star Nico Iamaleava. Meanwhile, Utah is coming off its first losing season (5-7) since 2013 and is breaking in a quarterback who had as many interceptions (12) as touchdown passes a year ago. UCLA covers well over 60% of the time, per the model, with the Under (50) hitting in nearly 80% of simulations.

The model has also made the call on who wins and covers in every other FBS matchup, and it's calling for an upset in one of the week's biggest games!

So which college football teams should you back in Week 1, and which underdog win outright? ... Join SportsLine now to see who wins and covers every single game, all from the model that has returned well over $2,000 in profit on top-rated ATS picks since its inception!

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