Ohio State Tops 2026 Preseason AP Poll: Are the Buckeyes Really the Best Team?
The 2026 Associated Press preseason college football poll is out, and Ohio State is your No. 1 team. The Buckeyes collected 40 first-place votes, comfortably ahead of Oregon (14), Georgia, Notre Dame, and Texas rounding out the top five.
Defending national champion Indiana slotted in at No. 6 with eight first-place votes. Miami, which lost to Indiana in the national title game in January, is seventh with one first-place vote. Texas A&M, Ole Miss, and Oklahoma filled out the top ten. That is a Big Ten conference at the top and an SEC surge in the middle.
The takeaway is that voters believe the Big Ten still owns college football. The conference has won three straight national championships. The top two teams in the country play in it. The reigning champion sits at No. 6. That is a run of dominance that would have felt impossible a decade ago.
Is Ohio State actually the best team in America? On paper, absolutely. The Buckeyes retained key pieces from a playoff team, added portal upgrades at multiple positions, and have the recruiting depth to reload at any spot that opens up. Ryan Day still gets more grief than any coach with his resume deserves, but the truth is that Ohio State is a machine.
The pressure on Ohio State is somehow even higher than usual. They open the season as the No. 1 team. They are expected to win the Big Ten. They are expected to reach the College Football Playoff. Any outcome short of a semifinal appearance will be treated as a disappointment. Fair or not, that is the Ohio State standard.
Oregon is the team that could take the No. 1 spot in the first month. The Ducks have national title-caliber talent, a coach in Dan Lanning who has consistently exceeded expectations, and a schedule that offers plenty of chances to make a statement. They have quarterback questions that Ohio State does not have, but their ceiling is as high as anyone in the country.
Georgia at three feels low if you have watched what Kirby Smart has done every fall for the last five years. Notre Dame at four is a nod to the depth of last year’s team returning. Texas at five is where the SEC starts.
The team that got the most votes without cracking the Top 25 was Clemson. The last time the Tigers went unranked in the preseason AP poll was 2011. Dabo Swinney’s program is officially in a different tier than it used to be, and that is a bigger story than any of the top-10 debates.
The first FBS games kick off Saturday, Aug. 29. Ohio State is No. 1 today. Everyone else is going to spend three months trying to change that.
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.
