The Preseason AP Top 25 poll is here, and I just want to give some quick knee-jerk reactions to what the voters think. This is not necessarily gospel, however there are a few things that stand out.
The Top 5
These are all teams I expect to be good this year, however Penn State at 2 and Clemson at 4 feel like a bit of a stretch. Clemson went 10-4 last year with losses to Louisville and South Carolina, and Penn State still has to prove to me they can actually win the Big Ten (or beat OSU). Not super egregious but I would push some of these teams down a few spots if I got a ballot.
6-10
These choices are all pretty good, though I would probably have Oregon at 5 or 6. Both ND and Oregon face a QB battle in fall camp, but to me Oregon has proven they can win bowl games more consistently than Notre Dame. Maybe this year changes that.
11-20
Again a fairly solid block of teams. I would reshuffle it a bit, but I feel like most of these teams are fine to be here. Oklahoma at 18 feels like brand bias however. I wouldn’t rank a single team that went 6-7 and lost to Navy in their bowl game.
Florida at 15 is way too high. Lagway is a great player but they haven’t proven they can win with Napier at the helm.
Kansas State should also be a bit lower. I don’t think they’ve proven to be a top 20 team as currently constituted.
Also, why do we keep preseason ranking A&M?
21-25
No real complaints here. Texas Tech is mostly there out of transfer portal hype rather than last year’s results, but 23 is a fair spot for that. Tennesse suffered from Nico leaving, and Boise State rounds it off because the AP can never preseason rank more than one G5 apparently.
Receiving Votes
Leading out the pack in what would make spots 26-28 is 3 Big XII teams in BYU, Utah, and Baylor. As a BYU fan I am happy with here, though I think we could have slid into the top 25. I get it with the lack of Retzlaff however. I’d swap Utah and Baylor, but they play this season so they can sort that on the field. I’d expect to see all three of these teams to sneak into the rankings if their week 1 games go well and some top teams falter, especially if Baylor can beat Auburn.
The next block is some standard borderline good P4 teams, and the next G5 coming in is Tulane at what would be 33. If they can split their P5 non-conference match-ups they have the chance to make the playoff, especially if Boise State takes their expected step back with Ashton Jeanty gone to the league.
There are a few more G5s in there, but the worst receiving votes candidate is Florida State. A team that went 2-10 last year has no business getting a single vote. Prove it first!
A decent first ranking
Despite my personal belief that pre-season polls should be eliminated completely, this AP poll is not bad. They got I think most of the teams that should be in the top 25 correct, even if the order is up for debate. If they dropped 2-3 SEC teams and a few of the Receiving Votes teams moved up it would be much fairer.