The 2026 college football preseason polls are about to arrive, like the AP Top 25, and the projections leading into them lean hard on brand names and offseason headlines.
Some teams are ranked for what they spent in the transfer portal. Some are ranked for who they hired. Some are ranked based on a reputation built a year or two ago, rather than on what’s happening right now.
Here are five programs sitting higher in the early 2026 college football rankings than their rosters and recent results justify.
Texas is projected top five again after missing the College Football Playoff
Texas opened 2025 as the AP preseason No. 1 for the first time in school history, finished 9-3 and never reached the College Football Playoff. Nearly every 2026 projection puts the Longhorns back in the top five.
The offensive line that broke last season is the reason to wait. Texas entered 2025 with one returning starter up front and averaged 3.3 yards per carry in SEC play, which forced Steve Sarkisian into a pass-heavy plan Arch Manning was not ready to run. Three starters return this year, including left tackle Trevor Goosby, but four running backs left through the portal and the position group was rebuilt from scratch.
Sarkisian set the bar himself in Tampa. “We compete for national championships every year,” the sixth-year Texas coach said at SEC media days. “It doesn’t matter what conference we’re in. Whether it was the Big 12, the SEC, our goals don’t change.”
Manning did finish strong, throwing 15 touchdowns against two interceptions over the final eight games after a start that produced 11 touchdowns and five interceptions in six games. That is a half season of good quarterback play, and it is being priced as a full one.
Alabama sits in the top 10 without a starting quarterback
Alabama has been ranked in the top 10 of every preseason AP poll since 2008. Some 2026 projections keep the streak alive, including one predicted coaches poll that slots the Crimson Tide 10th. Others have Kalen DeBoer’s team in the mid-teens. All of them are ranking a team with no quarterback named.
Senior Austin Mack and sophomore Keelon Russell are still competing to replace Ty Simpson, who left for the NFL. DeBoer would prefer to settle it before the opener against East Carolina and admitted in Tampa that the two are hard to separate.
“It’s going to be a hard decision,” the third-year Alabama coach said. “These guys are going at it pretty hard.” Mack has four years in the system. Russell was a consensus five-star recruit with two career game appearances.
The run game looks to be the larger problem again heading into the new season. Alabama averaged 104 rushing yards per game last season, the 12th-lowest total in FBS, and the offensive line is being rebuilt again. Alabama also ranks in the bottom half of the country in returning snap percentage. The secondary is legitimate, with Zabien Brown, Keon Sabb and Bray Hubbard all back. That is not enough to justify a top-10 slot.
LSU is a top 12 team coming off a 7-6 season
LSU won seven games last season, fired Brian Kelly midseason and hired Lane Kiffin away from Ole Miss. ESPN’s power rankings debuted the Tigers at No. 10, and most projections have them between 10th and 12th. Nothing about that ranking comes from what LSU did on the field.
It comes from the portal. Kiffin brought in 60 scholarship players for 2026, 41 from the No. 1-ranked transfer class and 19 more from the No. 13 recruiting class. It is the largest year-to-year roster overhaul in program history. Nine of the wide receivers are new. So is the quarterback.
“We put together a roster that can win now,” Kiffin said at SEC media days in Tampa.
Sam Leavitt is the centerpiece and the biggest unknown. The Arizona State transfer had Lisfranc surgery last season, played only seven games, sat out all of spring and was cleared over the summer. His last full season was 2024. The Tigers open against Clemson on Sept. 5 and face Ole Miss and Texas A&M in the same month, which leaves no runway for 59 new teammates to learn each other. SEC media voted LSU fifth in the conference, behind Georgia, Texas, Ole Miss and Texas A&M.
Miami is the near-unanimous ACC favorite after losing 16 starters
Miami received 165 of 188 first-place votes in the ACC preseason media poll, a margin that treats the conference race as settled. The Hurricanes went 13-3 and reached the national championship game, losing 27-21 to Indiana. They also lost 16 players who started that game.
Both starting defensive ends are gone. Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor anchored the front that carried Miami through the playoff, and Mario Cristobal is asking a group led by Armondo Blount, Marquise Lightfoot and Missouri transfer Damon Wilson II to replace them. “Those guys, they’ve been working to replace,” the fifth-year Miami coach said at ACC Kickoff in Charlotte. “It’s their time.”
The offensive line has four new starters, and true freshman Jackson Cantwell is projected at left tackle. Cantwell was the top-rated offensive tackle in the 2026 class, which does not change the fact that Miami is asking a first-year player to protect a first-year quarterback.
Darian Mensah threw for 3,973 yards and 34 touchdowns at Duke, was voted ACC Preseason Player of the Year, and he is playing for his third school in three seasons.
Penn State is ranked in the teens after a seven-win season
Penn State finished 7-6 last season and went 3-6 in Big Ten play. The Nittany Lions opened as the AP preseason No. 2, lost to UCLA and Northwestern as a favorite of at least 20 points in both games, and fired James Franklin six games in. Terry Smith finished the year as interim. Most 2026 projections have Penn State between 13th and 17th.
The case for that ranking is Matt Campbell and the 24 former Iowa State players who came with him, including quarterback Rocco Becht, who has 9,274 career passing yards entering his fourth season as a starter. D’Anton Lynn returns to State College as defensive coordinator after running defenses at UCLA and USC.
The schedule helps too. Penn State avoids Ohio State, Oregon and Indiana. That is a real advantage, but it is also why the ranking is hard to trust: very little on the slate will test whether this roster is a top team.
Campbell has not made any promises in roster construction. “We have to find the right young men and the right families that they trust who we are,” the first-year Penn State coach said at Big Ten media days in Chicago. Voters are ranking a transition that has not played a snap.
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