One of the best times of any college football season is when the entire sport gets to take a breath from the chaos and spend some time celebrating excellence. The College Football Playoff and the pursuit of a national championship will begin soon, and we do still have to celebrate the excellence that is the Army-Navy Game, but this week includes plenty of opportunities to recognize the best of the best from the 2025 season. Here at CBS Sports, we have participated with the unveiling of our All-America Team as well as the highest individual honors we award — Player of the Year, Coach of the Year and Freshman of the Year.
While the candidates and contenders may cross over with other national awards, we take pride in a voting process that asks our best and brightest from across CBS Sports and 247Sports to participate. It gives us a unique voice that sometimes stands in unison — and other times in opposition — to the outside consensus. This year’s award winners represent a blend of both, as we celebrate the players and coach who stood out among their peers.
But, ultimately, what ties our three winners together is excellence. All of the individuals honored here helped their team reach at least 10 wins, and two of them did so in places where high-level success is not the historical standard. These are individuals who are re-writing history and shaking up expectations in real time, which certainly stands out when trying to determine the most impactful players and coaches in the sport from 2025.
CBS Sports’ 2025 College Football All-America Team: Postseason picks for the best at every position
Cody Nagel
So let’s begin with Player of the Year, where we find a success story from the modern college football era. There were no blue chip ratings or blue blood scholarship offers for the quarterback who started his career in the junior college ranks, but after a couple of transfers and years of hard work, he’s wound up standing out as the best player in the sport.
2025 CBS Sports college football awards
Player of the Year: Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt QB
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No player in college football has meant more to his team’s success than Pavia, who put the Commodores on his back down the stretch to finish with 10 wins and a top 15 ranking. Vanderbilt beat four ranked opponents this fall for the first time in program history, three coming over the final six games in which Pavia accounted for 2,257 total yards and 20 total touchdowns. That’s a full season for some inside the top 25 with much less talent around him. Pavia backed up an offseason full of promises with stellar play on the field as a senior.
The Commodores reached unprecedented highs with a quarterback who became beloved in Nashville and brought enhanced exposure to a program under Clark Lea that’s doing what it can to get a seat at the big-boy table in the SEC moving forward. — Brad Crawford
Coach of the Year: Curt Cignetti, Indiana
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Curt Cignetti won a Big Ten championship and secured a No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff at Indiana. Seriously, what more needs to be said? What Cignetti has done at Indiana has been nothing short of remarkable and could go down as one of the greatest hires in college football history. A year after critics believed his Year 1 success was a fluke, a one-hit wonder, Cignetti proved the Hoosiers are here to stay.
Led by Heisman Trophy finalist Fernando Mendoza and one of the nation’s best defenses, the Hoosiers went a perfect 13-0 including wins over Ohio State, Oregon and Iowa. Indiana is a bonafide national title contender — a program that until this season was the losingest in college football history — and that’s a credit to the job Cignetti has done. Give this man his flowers. — John Talty
Freshman of the Year: Malachi Toney, Miami WR
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Even though Miami is not in line with Vanderbilt and Indiana as potential powers that are often overlooked, Malachi Toney did not start his college career with the kind of hype awarded to other true freshman wide receivers in recent years. A three-star local prospect out of Liberty City, Florida, and a star at American Heritage, Toney reclassified from the 2026 to the 2025 recruiting cycle to join the Hurricanes for spring practice in what would have been the spring semester of his junior year. Yet that youth did prove to be a disadvantage, because Toney won over the coaching staff with a work ethic that matched the wow factor of his speed and natural athleticism. That led to early opportunities on the field and Toney wasted no time making it clear that he was going to be a problem for every Miami opponent.
Toney had six receptions for 82 yards and a touchdown in Miami’s season-opening — and ultimately season-defining — win against Notre Dame and never looked back. He finished with a team-high 84 catches for 970 yards and seven touchdowns, while adding a rushing touchdown and two passing touchdowns thanks to his ability to throw the ball out of unique play designs. When you combine that with his work as a punt returner, it is not an exaggeration to say that no individual had a more widespread impact Miami’s first-ever College Football Playoff season than this recently turned 18-year-old true freshman. — Chip Patterson
