The Associated Press just handed the Big Ten the keys to college football, and half the country still wants to argue about the valet.
Ohio State sits at No. 1 in the preseason poll with 40 first-place votes and 1,672 points. Oregon is right behind them at No. 2. That is the first time the Big Ten has locked down the top two preseason spots in 65 years, and the first time any conference has done it since the old Big Eight ran the table in 1987. I have watched this sport long enough to know when a ranking is noise and when it is a confession. This is a confession.
Three straight College Football Playoff titles now belong to the Big Ten. Michigan. Ohio State. Indiana’s 16-0 steamroll last winter. The SEC still stuffed nine teams into the Top 25 and somehow collected zero first-place votes. Quantity without the crown is just a participation trophy with better recruiting graphics.
Indiana Got Sent to the Kids’ Table After Winning Everything
Let me tell you something about those voters. They put the defending national champions at No. 6. Indiana. Curt Cignetti’s Hoosiers. Sixteen and zero. First Heisman in program history. Highest preseason ranking in school history and they still buried them behind Texas and Notre Dame like last season was a clerical error.
I said it when the confetti was still falling in the title game: this league was never going to fully respect what Indiana did because it embarrassed every blue-blood projection model in the building. Eight first-place votes for the champs and a sixth-place finish is not caution. It is pride management. You do not go undefeated, win the whole thing, and open the next year outside the top five unless the people filling out the ballots are protecting a narrative that already died.
Ohio State earned the top line. Ryan Day walks into year eight at 82-12 with Julian Sayin back after 3,610 yards, 32 touchdowns, and eight interceptions, and Jeremiah Smith returning after 1,243 receiving yards. That quarterback-receiver pairing is a problem for every defensive coordinator on the schedule. Bo Jackson already posted a 1,000-yard freshman season. The talent is real. The ranking is earned.
But Day is not popping champagne over poll position. After the first practice of camp he told the AP, “Well, I think we all wanna see how the offensive line shakes out here, that’s for sure.” That is a head coach who understands legacy is built in the trenches, not on a August spreadsheet. He went further: “I think the tight end room is an interesting room. I think that we do have some depth there, but who’s actually gonna take the majority of those reps?”
Read that again. The man sitting on the No. 1 ranking in America is talking about unresolved depth charts while the rest of the country debates branding. That is why this Buckeyes team scares me more than the shiny preseason version of them. Day has watched enough of these cycles to know a poll in mid-August is a target, not a trophy.
The Schedule Will Expose Every Soft Take by Halloween
Ohio State’s non-conference and league slate is an act of aggression. Week 2 against No. 5 Texas. A mid-October rematch with No. 6 Indiana that will decide the Big Ten race before the leaves finish falling. Oregon is lurking. Michigan closes the regular season. Six ranked opponents. Ryan Day has spent years hearing he cannot finish. This schedule does not care about his feelings or the 40 first-place votes.
Oregon at No. 2 is the highest preseason ranking in program history. Fair. They return enough pieces to justify it. Georgia at No. 3 with zero first-place votes tells you everything about how the SEC’s aura has dimmed when the trophies keep landing in the Midwest. Notre Dame at No. 4 with six first-place votes is the annual Irish tax. Miami at No. 7 after knocking Ohio State out of last year’s quarterfinals earned the respect. The rest of the board is noise until September forces honesty.
I have watched Ohio State carry this burden before. Ninth preseason No. 1 in program history, tied with Alabama, trailing only Oklahoma’s ten. They have not opened No. 1 since 2015. The last three national champions all came from their conference. Yet the discourse still treats Big Ten supremacy like a temporary weather pattern.
It is not temporary. It is the new weather.
The expanded playoff means this preseason poll is about seeding leverage and narrative control more than survival. Ohio State and Oregon just claimed the top two seeds on paper before a snap. Indiana got shoved down the board after doing the impossible. The SEC packed the middle and got shut out of the first-place conversation entirely.
I am done listening to volume arguments. Nine ranked teams means nothing if none of them were good enough to earn a single first-place vote while the Big Ten parked itself at one and two for the first time since the Kennedy administration. Ryan Day’s group has the quarterback, the receiver, the running back, and the target on its chest. The offensive line still has to prove it. The defense has to replace bodies. None of that erases what the voters finally admitted Monday.
The throne moved. The conference that owns the last three titles just took the first two chairs. Everybody else can keep counting bodies in the Top 25. I am counting banners. And right now the Big Ten is the only league stacking them.
