Ohio State sits alone at No. 1 in the preseason AP Top 25, and the ranking feels less like a coronation than a dare. Forty first-place votes and 1,672 points put the Buckeyes ahead of Oregon’s 14 first-place votes and 1,597 points, handing the Big Ten the top two spots for the first time since 1961 and only the second time ever. I look at that and see a conference finally getting credit for three straight national titles, then immediately wonder how long the shiny number lasts once the schedule starts swinging.
The offense is the easy part of the case. Julian Sayin was the most accurate passer in the country last season and a Heisman finalist. Jeremiah Smith has led the nation in receiving yards and touchdowns over the last two years. Bo Jackson just dropped a 1,000-yard rushing season as a freshman. That trio alone explains why voters stacked 40 first-place ballots on Ryan Day’s desk. Oregon’s highest preseason ranking in program history sits right behind them for a reason: Dan Lanning’s group returns enough pieces to make the Big Ten look like the clearest path to another title chase. The last time any conference locked down 1-2 in the preseason was Oklahoma and Nebraska of the Big Eight in 1987. History is not subtle here.
The Schedule Is the Real Ballot
I keep coming back to September 12. Ohio State opens with Ball State, then walks into Austin against Texas. Five of nine Big Ten games feature preseason ranked teams, including a trip to Indiana and a home date with Oregon. That is not a soft runway; it is a gauntlet designed to test whether the preseason gloss survives contact. The defense has to replace eight starters for the second straight year and will lean on at least six transfers in major roles. Talent is there. Continuity is not. Preseason No. 1 teams rarely finish the year there, and this particular slate looks built to expose any soft spots early.
Indiana, the defending national champion that went 16-0 and beat Ohio State 13-10 in the Big Ten title game, opens at No. 6 with eight first-place votes. That placement is the quiet scandal of the poll. A team that just ran the table and owns the most recent head-to-head gets parked behind Georgia, Notre Dame, and Texas. Voters still treat brand equity like a starting lineup. Curt Cignetti’s Hoosiers earned the right to sit higher, and the gap between their résumé and their ranking is the clearest proof that August ballots still lag reality by about six months.
SEC Depth Still Crowds the Room
The SEC shoved nine teams into the Top 25 for the third straight year, five of them in the top 10. Georgia sits at No. 3 with zero first-place votes but 1,513 points, right where Kirby Smart’s machine always seems to land in August. Texas, last year’s preseason No. 1, opens fifth after a 10-3 finish. Texas A&M, Ole Miss, and Oklahoma round out a top-10 cluster that refuses to yield ground even as the Big Ten claims the marquee. Four Big 12 teams and three from the ACC fill out the rest. No Group of Five side cracked the list. The conference math is straightforward: the Big Ten owns the top of the pyramid right now, but the SEC still owns the depth chart.
Steve Sarkisian, whose Longhorns will host the Buckeyes in Week 2, put the entire exercise in its proper place. “I love the polls for college football fans, for the excitement, for the marquee matchups, for all those things,” he said. “But the polls, internally, they just don’t matter. They’re really irrelevant. I think we’ve gotten to a point now as a team to understand that what matters is how we play each and every Saturday.” That is the cleanest read available. The ranking creates the marquee. It does not decide who survives it.
Ohio State now owns nine preseason No. 1 rankings, tied with Alabama for second all-time behind Oklahoma’s 10. The Buckeyes have finished a season at No. 1 six times. Those two numbers do not automatically connect. Oregon has never opened this high. Indiana just proved that a program can rewrite its ceiling in one calendar year. I am not buying the idea that the August poll has identified the eventual champion. I am buying that it has correctly identified the two programs with the clearest paths and the loudest early tests. The Big Ten’s grip on the sport is real. Whether Ohio State can carry the target from Week 0 to January is the only question that actually counts, and the answer will not come from 69 media ballots. It will come in Austin, in Bloomington, and eventually against whoever is still standing from that nine-team SEC wave.
