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Cole Cubelic ranks Texas as No. 1 team in SEC for 2025

Chandler Vesselsby: Chandler Vessels06/11/25ChandlerVessels
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Ricardo B. Brazziell/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Cole Cubelic sees Texas as the team to beat in the SEC entering the 2025 college football season. The Longhorns are coming off of a runner-up finish in the conference title game this past year and reached the semifinals of the College Football Playoff.

Texas is set to start Arch Manning, the nephew of former NFL stars Peyton and Eli Manning, in 2025. That combined with the other players the Longhorns have on their roster is reason enough for Cubelic to declare then the top team.

“I would probably put Texas at the top of the list right now,” he said on The Paul Finebaum Show. “I think that if you went talent-for-talent, guy-for-guy top to bottom, there’s no one who’s clearly gonna be ahead of them. Now, you might say Georgia, Alabama, LSU are close. But you’re not gonna say, ‘They’re leaps and bounds ahead of what Texas has.’ You have a quarterback that we’ve seen play some and done some special things. You have a big-time wide receiver room.

“They will have the best collective group of pass rushers in the Southeastern Conference, maybe in the nation. They’re just talented all over the place and we know how good of a coach Sark is. But I do want to see the interior of that defensive line and I want to see how Kyle Flood handles some big losses on the offensive line.”

Texas is preparing to enter its fifth season under coach Steve Sarkisian. The Longhorns have made the College Football Playoff in each of the past two years but have yet to reach the championship game.

They will hope that can change this season under Manning, who is the former No. 1 overall recruit in the 2023 cycle according to the On3 Industry Ranking. He has also started a few games from last season after starter Quinn Ewers went down with injury.

Texas brings in a few transfer receivers to give Manning some weapons, headlined my former Stanford player Emmett Mosely. As Cubelic mentioned, the Longhorns should also have a stout defense thanks to what they bring back up front.

The SEC will have a number of contenders this season but Texas will surely be one of them as it looks to make it back to the conference title game. Right now, Cole Cubelic and many others have the Longhorns penciled in, but they will need to prove it on the field.