The AP dropped its preseason Top 25 on Monday and the sport's power rankings look like they got put through a wood chipper. Ohio State opens at No. 1, Oregon slots in right behind at No. 2, and it's only the second time ever the Big Ten has held both of the top two preseason spots. Ohio State grabbed 40 first-place votes to Oregon's 14, and the Buckeyes now stretch their streak to 38 straight years opening the season ranked.
Ohio State and Oregon are 1-2 in the AP Top 25 released Monday. This is only the second time ever the Big Ten Conference has the top two teams in the preseason rankings. https://t.co/ph6X47Rs7M
The order behind them tells its own story. Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas round out the top 5, and defending national champion Indiana lands at No. 6. That's the same Indiana team that went 16-0 last season, upset its way through the bracket and beat Miami 27-21 in the title game for the program's first championship in 139 years. Miami, for what it's worth, still checks in at No. 7 preseason — its highest AP slot since 2004.
Then there's Alabama and Clemson, the poll's two big losers before a snap has even been taken. The Crimson Tide fell to No. 13, outside the top 10 for the first time since 2008 — Nick Saban's second year in Tuscaloosa, before Bama ripped off nearly two decades of top-10 preseason openers. Clemson's situation is worse: the Tigers are unranked entirely, something that hasn't happened to Dabo Swinney's program since 2011, back in just his third full year running the show.
Clemson is unranked in preseason @AP_Top25 poll for 1st time since 2011, Dabo Swinney's 3rd full year as Tigers' coach
Elsewhere the poll leaned into some genuine outliers. Texas Tech's No. 12 is its best preseason slot since 2008, BYU's No. 14 is its best since 1985, and Houston's No. 23 is its highest since 2016 — three programs that spent a long stretch on the outside now getting real preseason buy-in. The SEC still leads all conferences with 9 teams ranked, so depth-wise nothing has actually changed at the top of the sport's food chain, even if the marquee names shuffled hard.
None of this locks anything in, and the history backs that up. In the four-team-to-twelve-team playoff era, only about half of teams ranked 6-10 preseason have finished the year still ranked, and a preseason top-10 team has lost in Week 1 in each of the last 5 seasons. Alabama and Clemson have both been here before in different forms — coaches who opened outside the preseason top 10 or unranked and clawed back into the playoff picture by December. Whether either program does that again starts getting answered the moment games actually kick off.