It's prediction season, Clemson football fans.
Every year around this time, college football experts and analysts project who will win certain awards in the upcoming season and who will make certain bowls or the College Football Playoff.
During the Dabo Swinney era, these projections have always been fairly kind to Clemson. The Tigers are usually projected to be one of the best teams in the country, the top team in the ACC, and over the past decade, they've had their fair share of Heisman Trophy contenders and All-Americans.
That's no different this offseason.
Actually, Clemson is considered one of the best teams in the country and a legit national title contender for the first time since Trevor Lawrence was under center and it's because the Tigers return the most production of any team in the Power Four, led by Cade Klubnik.
As you could imagine, the offseason predictions surrounding Clemson should be more than favorable, and Sporting News is proof of that.
Sporting News released its official 2025 College Football Playoff projections and Clemson makes a return trip, according to Bill Bender. Not only that, but Clemson earns the No. 4 seed and a first-round bye, setting up a quarterfinal matchup with No. 5 seed Penn State in the Orange Bowl. That bye would give Clemson a massive advantage of only having to win two games to get to the national title instead of three.
Unfortunately, Sporting News' Bender projects Clemson will fall short to Penn State in that Orange Bowl matchup before the Nittany Lions lose to Texas, setting up a Longhorns vs. Ohio State title game.
The bye projection is spot-on, but I'm just going to disagree with the loss to Penn State.
Still, Clemson is getting a ton of preseason respect right now.