Ohio State Named No. 1 in Preseason AP Poll With Oregon at No. 2 in Big Ten Takeover
The Big Ten has taken over college football. The AP preseason poll made that official on Monday.
Ohio State opens the season as the No. 1 team in the country. Oregon sits at No. 2. It is the first time in 65 years the Big Ten has held the top two spots in the preseason AP poll. That is the kind of statistic that gets emailed around SEC athletic departments with a lot of angry commentary.
The Buckeyes received 40 first-place votes out of 69 possible. Oregon got 14. This is Ohio State’s ninth preseason No. 1 ranking in program history, and its first since 2015. That puts the program in a tie with Alabama for second-most all time, behind only Oklahoma’s 10.
Why Ohio State Is the Pick
The Buckeyes bring back most of the pieces from last year’s playoff run. Julian Sayin returns at quarterback with a full year of starting experience. The receiver room is loaded. The defensive front might be the best unit in the country. Ryan Day added a couple of key transfer portal pickups on the offensive line to shore up the biggest weakness from last season.
The schedule is the schedule. Ohio State draws Michigan on the road, has to travel to Penn State, and hosts Texas early in the year. That is a real slate. Nothing about the top ranking implies an easy road.
But this team has been built to win a national title. Not compete for one, not sneak into the playoff, but win it. The internal expectations in Columbus are exactly that high, and Day is coaching with the pressure of a fanbase that has watched him lose to Michigan too many times to be patient.
Oregon’s Case
The Ducks are the top team in the country in a lot of preseason analytics models. Dan Lanning has built a program that recruits like the SEC, plays fast like the Pac-12, and coaches disciplined like the old Big Ten. It is a combination that has been working.
Oregon returns significant experience at quarterback and on the defensive front. The offensive line has three multi-year starters back. The schedule is friendly early, and it sets up a potential top-five matchup with Ohio State in late October if both teams take care of business.
Lanning has said publicly that his team should be No. 1. He is not shy about that stuff. The voters disagreed, but not by a lot. If Oregon beats Ohio State in that October matchup, the polls will flip immediately.
The SEC Response
Georgia, Alabama, and Texas all land in the top 10, but none of them cracks the top three. That is a real shift for a conference that has been dominant for the last decade. The SEC used to have three of the top four spots in the preseason poll almost by default. Not this year.
Kirby Smart is famously prickly about media narratives, and his response to a Big Ten sweep of the top will be to work his players harder in fall camp. That is his default setting. Georgia opens with Clemson in one of the best Week 1 games in years, so the SEC will get to make its case early.
What This Poll Actually Means
Preseason polls exist to be argued about. They rarely predict the final rankings. They shape narratives, drive attention, and set the stage for early season upsets. Nothing more.
Ohio State being No. 1 puts a target on the Buckeyes. Every ranked team on their schedule circles the game. Every unranked team plays it like a bowl game. That is the cost of being on top before you have played a snap.
Buckeye fans do not care. They want the ranking, the target, and the trophy. Day has 15 weeks to deliver all three.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
