Ohio State Named Preseason No. 1 in College Football as SEC and Big Ten Battle for Playoff Bids
Ohio State is the preseason No. 1 team in college football. The Buckeyes edged Oregon for the top spot in the coaches poll and are a slight favorite to hold the top spot when the AP poll comes out next week.
Ryan Day’s team returns 14 starters from the group that made the College Football Playoff semifinals last season. That includes a quarterback with real Heisman upside in Julian Sayin, a running back rotation as deep as any in the country, and a defensive front that lost only one first-round pick to the draft.
The Big Ten has won three consecutive national titles. Ohio State, Oregon, and Indiana all have realistic shots to extend that streak. That is going to make for one of the best conference races in the modern era of college football. Every October Saturday in Big Ten country is going to have real playoff stakes.
The SEC is not going quietly. Georgia checks in at No. 4 in most polls. Texas is No. 3 or 5 depending on the outlet. Oklahoma, Texas A&M, LSU, and Ole Miss form a second tier that could see two or three teams in the playoff picture by November. The SEC will get its playoff bids. It just may not get the top seed.
The rest of the top 10 is where it gets interesting. Notre Dame and Miami both belong in the mix. Penn State is a top-15 team with a top-10 ceiling. Texas Tech is the highest-ranked Big 12 team, which is a preseason story in itself given how dormant the Red Raiders have been for a decade.
The Ohio State schedule is not exactly a gauntlet. The Buckeyes get Oregon and Michigan both at home. They play Penn State on the road but avoid Indiana in the regular season. If Sayin is what everyone thinks he is, this team is going 12-0 in the regular season and rolling into the Big Ten title game with a top-two seed already locked up.
Oregon is the challenger. Dan Lanning has quietly built the most complete roster in the Pac-12-era-turned-Big-Ten world. The Ducks return an experienced quarterback, have the deepest wide receiver room in the country, and added two elite portal transfers on defense. If they beat Ohio State in Columbus in October, the entire preseason ranking gets flipped upside down.
The season kicks off in less than three weeks. The first real test week is late September when Ohio State plays Alabama in a neutral-site opener that will decide who owns the early-season narrative. That game alone is going to determine playoff seeding come December.
Preseason polls do not decide anything. They just tell you what the sport looks like on paper. Right now, the paper says Ohio State is the team to beat.
Everyone else has 12 weeks to prove otherwise. Kickoff is coming.
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.
