ESPN college football rankings are fully bought in on Kalen DeBoer's Alabama

We are in the heart of the offseason in major college football. While Labor Day is only a summer away, we are starting to shift our focus fully away from last year ahead to what is about to become. One of the best ways to do that is to have prominent members of the media such as Mark Schlabach of ESPN.com provide us with a preliminary college football top 25 rankings. He did just that on Monday.

Of the course of both transfer portal windows, spring practice and a myriad of head-coaching changes, we are all starting to arrive at who we think can win a national championship, who is a top-10 team, and who might be good enough to crack the top 25. The answer is somewhere out there, as the growing consensus will get us to the boiling point we are all hoping for right around early August.

There is obviously a lot to unpack here with Schlabach's latest for ESPN.com, but one immediate take away that I can kind of sort of get behind is him having the Alabama Crimson Tide coming in at No. 7 under new head coach Kalen DeBoer. We know what Alabama is all about as a program, and we like what we have seen out of DeBoer at multiple spots. Could the Crimson Tide be ahead of schedule?

Let's answer that, as well as take a look at who all made the top 25 in Schlabach's latest rankings.

College football top 25 rankings: Mark Schlabach is bullish on Alabama

These are the top 25 teams in the country after spring practice, according to Schlabach at ESPN.

1. Georgia Bulldogs
2. Ohio State Buckeyes
3. Texas Longhorns
4. Oregon Ducks
5. Notre Dame Fighting Irish
6. Ole Miss Rebels
7. Alabama Crimson Tide
8. Missouri Tigers
9. Utah Utes
10. Michigan Wolverines
11. Florida State Seminoles
12. Penn State Nittany Lions
13. North Carolina State Wolfpack
14. LSU Tigers
15. Tennessee Volunteers
16. Clemson Tigers
17. Kansas State Wildcats
18. Oklahoma Sooners
19. Oklahoma State Cowboys
20. Arizona Wildcats
21. Virginia Tech Hokies
22. Kansas Jayhawks
23. Iowa Hawkeyes
24. Miami Hurricanes
25. USC Trojans

I will probably dive into this a bit more in a bit on another post, but Alabama's one of the handful of teams that Schlabach is more bullish on than even me. He has them No. 7, but I would have had them closer to No. 10. I would at least have the Missouri Tigers ahead of them in the rankings, as well as the six teams that are already ahead of them. I am high on Penn State, so No. 9 or No. 10 makes sense.

The thing that I keep going back to is pretty much everybody will have the same teams in the top four in some order. Georgia, Ohio State, Texas and Oregon seem to be a cut above the rest. All four feel like locks for the College Football Playoff. That next tier is a little more nebulous. I think there is a cut-off at around No. 10 to No. 13 in Schlabach's rankings, but again, I don't have the same teams as him.

Overall, Alabama is well ahead of the dividing line in terms of playoff probable to playoff hopeful. Again, I still think Alabama is a playoff team, but the Crimson Tide feel closer to one of the last teams in, as opposed to the No. 7 to No. 9 seed in this current 12-team format. The gap between them and somebody like say, LSU should not be as much as it is. They are more neck and neck, in my opinion.

Ultimately, this is the type of content our souls crave. We love argue about god knows what on the third rock from the sun. Having something of substance to discuss and debate at the water cooler is exactly what we needed. Again, the answer is always somewhere in the in between. For now, I can safely say it is more likely than not that Alabama will be making it back to the College Football Playoff.

While I am okay with Alabama being No. 7 here, that is about as high as I am willing to go with them.