Bullet point summary by AI
- The new preseason college football coaches poll heavily favors two leagues, filling 68% of the top 25 spots with SEC and Big Ten programs.
- Nine SEC and eight Big Ten teams made the list, leaving only seven spots combined for the Big 12, ACC, and independents.
- Voter bias overinflates conference power, but upcoming games will quickly expose fake contenders and prove ranking lists mean little on Saturdays.
It’s officially poll season, and that means college football games are right around the corner. With contests scheduled to kick off this month, we finally have an official idea of which programs are considered the best amongst their peers.
The preseason coaches top 25 rankings were released Tuesday, and it should be no surprise to anyone the upper half of the list is crammed with representatives from the Big Ten and SEC. In fact, this year’s poll features 17 teams from those two conferences alone — that’s 68 percent of the recorded field.
CFB Preseason Coaches Poll by conference:
SEC: 9
Big Ten: 8
Big 12: 4
ACC: 3
Independent: 1 pic.twitter.com/oEKt0qOPwl— Underdog (@Underdog) August 4, 2026
Of that group, nine are from the SEC and eight from the Big Ten. So, coaches believe half of each conference is among the best of the best across the entire sport. Only three teams in the first half of the poll are from outside those two leagues — No. 5 Notre Dame, No. 7 Miami and No. 12 Texas Tech. That’s sending the alarming message that the Big 12 (four total representatives) and the ACC (three) just don’t matter.
Preseason college football rankings should be taken with a grain of salt
Both power conferences have been puffing their chests over superiority in recent weeks. The SEC is finally moving to a nine-game in-conference schedule to match the Big Ten but that hasn’t stopped it from complaining about the perceived disadvantages. At media days, coaches from both sides took shots at the other, which just leaves college football fans rolling their eyes.
Even without the underlying narrative battle over the SEC and Big Ten’s dominance of college football, every edition of the coaches poll must be taken with a grain of salt. There are clear agendas behind every vote, and — while nobody can definitively prove it — the coaches giving their opinions are definitely angling to give their own teams and conferences a better reputation that season.
The Associated Press’ top 25 gets more credence during the year ahead of the College Football Playoff rankings, and that’s for good reason. They too are weighed down by bias, but it’s less obvious than the coaches poll. Clearly this time around the Big Ten and SEC leaders are looking to make themselves appear a larger juggernaut than they are.
At least half of the teams in the current coaches poll will drop out across the first few weeks and by the end of the season, it would be shocking if there were still more than seven representatives from either the SEC or Big Ten remaining. You could chalk that up to a testament to either conference’s tough schedules or the fact that most members aren’t actually top 25-worthy like the coaches believe.
The football will determine which teams and conferences actually have the best teams. It always does but the fans must continue to learn how to read past the Big Ten and SEC-tinted glass that covers the competition. Polls are just lists of teams with numbers next to their names. The beauty of the sport is the fact that any team can beat any other team on any given Saturday.
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