Ohio State and Oregon Top 2026 College Football Coaches Poll: Indiana’s Title Defense Sits at No. 4
The Big Ten has the top two teams in college football, per the coaches who have to actually game plan against them.
Ohio State opened the 2026 preseason coaches poll at No. 1 with 38 first-place votes, followed by Oregon with six first-place votes at No. 2, and Georgia at No. 3 with seven first-place votes. Defending national champion Indiana came in at No. 4. The AP Top 25 will be released August 17.
Let us stop and remember how strange the sport is right now. Indiana is the reigning national champion. Yes, that Indiana. Curt Cignetti’s team beat Oregon in the Peach Bowl to win the whole thing last season, and they still open the year outside the top three because the sport does not believe them yet. Fine. Prove it again.
The Ohio State selection at No. 1 is the safer, more traditional pick. Ryan Day still has the deepest roster in college football, has the best defensive front seven in the sport, and is coming off a season where he finally got the College Football Playoff monkey off his back. The Buckeyes are running back a huge chunk of a title-caliber defense and reloading on offense with a mix of transfer portal veterans and highly rated freshmen. If the quarterback situation shakes out, Columbus has the pieces to run through the Big Ten and win it all.
Oregon at No. 2 makes sense from a talent perspective. Dan Lanning has recruited at an elite level for three straight cycles now. He has NFL pieces on both sides of the ball and one of the more creative offensive systems in the country. The gap between Oregon and Ohio State in the poll is 46 points, which is small enough that they could easily swap places by midseason.
Georgia is going to be Georgia. Kirby Smart’s teams do not go away. Even in an offseason with roster turnover and some transfer portal defections, the Bulldogs will show up in October with a defense that punches you in the mouth and a quarterback who avoids the mistake. The seven first-place votes tell you exactly how the coaches feel about them regardless of the ranking.
The interesting under-the-radar teams are the ones just outside the top 10. Notre Dame has serious pieces returning after a Playoff appearance. Texas will be reloading with the best portal class in the SEC. Michigan has to prove they are back after a couple of down years post-Harbaugh. Penn State has to prove they can win a game that matters. LSU is always LSU.
Week Zero starts August 29, so we have less than a month before real football is on. USC hosts San Jose State that day on NBC Sports as the marquee kickoff. That means we get preseason poll debates for another three weeks before anyone actually plays a game that matters.
Ohio State should be No. 1. Oregon has the roster to challenge. Georgia will hang around no matter what. And Indiana is going to spend a whole season with a chip on its shoulder because nobody actually believes what they did.
Curt Cignetti will use it. He always does.
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.
