With a logjam atop the AP Top 25, a bunch of early marquee matchups may help sort things out
Only two first-place votes and five points separate No. 1 Texas and No. 2 Penn State. Each of the top five teams, and six of the top seven, received at least one No. 1 vote.
Given the logjam, what an ideal year for there to be so many marquee games before the calendar turns to September. There are three top-10 matchups in Week 1 alone.
The most anticipated is Texas at third-ranked and defending national champion Ohio State on Aug. 30. The College Football Playoff semifinal rematch is the highest-ranked opener since 2017, when No. 1 Alabama knocked off No. 3 Florida State in Atlanta.
The other two showdowns: No. 9 LSU visits No. 4 Clemson on Aug. 30 and No. 6 Notre Dame is at No. 10 Miami the next day.
The outcomes of those games could — emphasis on could — start providing some clarity in a year when AP's Top 25 voters were challenged more than usual to come up with a preseason pecking order.
'I think about five or six teams could claim No. 1,' said Sam McKewon, sports editor of the Omaha (Nebraska) World-Herald and a veteran voter. 'NIL, revenue sharing and the transfer portal have spread out the talent a little bit from the first seven or eight years of the CFP era. But I also think Penn State, my No. 1, and Texas, likely the most talented team, probably have something to prove in the eyes of some voters.'
Texas' unknowns are how its reconstructed offensive line will come together in front of quarterback Arch Manning and how the receiving corps responds to losing four of the top six pass-catchers. Of course, there always are questions when a new quarterback takes over but, among the folks in burnt orange, there is much more excitement than anxiety over Manning.
Penn State is a trendy pick to win the national championship with third-year starting quarterback Drew Allar and star running backs Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen returning to school and defensive coordinator extraordinaire Jim Knowles coming over from Ohio State. The Nittany Lions needed a serious upgrade at receiver, and they think they accomplished that.
Throw in Ohio State as a team with something to prove, too. The Buckeyes perhaps have the best defensive player in the nation in Caleb Downs and perhaps the top receiver in Jeremiah Smith. It all comes down to quarterback, and who that will be is still to be determined.
Don't forget Dublin
Ireland will host its first Top 25 matchup when No. 22 Iowa State meets No. 17 Kansas State in Dublin on Aug. 23, and there are plenty of reasons to watch this season opener for the entire sport.
First, it's a rivalry. Iowa State beat the Wildcats 29-21 in the 2024 'Farmageddon' game in Ames to lock up a spot in the Big 12 championship game. ISU's Rocco Becht and K-State's Avery Johnson make for a intriguing quarterback matchup. Both teams likely will be battling for spots in the conference title game again.
Illini under radar no longer
Illinois won't sneak up on anybody, and that's just how Bret Bielema likes it heading into his fifth season. The Illini are in the preseason Top 25 for the first time since 2008, and their No. 12 ranking is their highest since they opened No. 7 in 2001.
Bielema talked of grand possibilities when he was hired, and he's getting closer to delivering. The Illini won eight games in his second year and, after taking a step back in 2023, tied program records with 10 wins and four against Top 25 opponents.
Fifth-year quarterback Luke Altmyer is among 16 returning starters, and the schedule is manageable. As of now, the Illini play only two ranked teams — at No. 20 Indiana on Sept. 20 and at home against No. 3 Ohio State on Oct. 11.
Extra points
The most notable return to the preseason Top 25 is No. 16 SMU. The Mustangs hadn't been ranked to begin a season since 1985 under Bobby Collins. ... No. 13 South Carolina's last preseason ranking was 2014 under Steve Spurrier. ... No. 23 Texas Tech has a preseason ranking for the first time since 2008 under Mike Leach. It also is the Red Raiders' first ranking since 2018, when they were in for one week in late September at No. 25. ... No. 8 Alabama's ranking is its lowest in the preseason since it was No. 24 in 2008, Nick Saban's second season. ... Only one team from a power conference has never appeared in the preseason Top 25: Vanderbilt.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
39 minutes ago
- New York Times
Ramón Urías ran the Astros' hitters meeting. Then his former team almost perfect game'd them
HOUSTON — Before he stopped history, Ramón Urías tried to tell his new teammates how to prevent it. No one inside the Houston Astros clubhouse had more meticulous knowledge of Friday's opponent than Urías, the 31-year-old middle infielder acquired 16 days ago from the Baltimore Orioles. Using any of Urías' insights is logical. Astros manager Joe Espada deployed a similar tactic last week at loanDepot Park, where deadline acquisition Jesús Sánchez stood up during Houston's series advance meeting and spilled all he knew about the Miami Marlins team he just departed. Advertisement Urías had the same responsibility on Friday afternoon. Espada said he expected to hear 'some of their style and strategy and go over some of the stuff we have noticed in the scouting report' of an Orioles roster ravaged by a trade deadline fire sale. Urías said he spoke of the Orioles' baserunning tendencies and how they play. 'I didn't have anything to say about the pitching staff because there's a lot of new guys over there,' said Urías after saving the Astros from ignominy in a 7-0 loss. One of them stood on the precipice of perfection when Urías stepped into the batter's box for his third at-bat. Urías fell behind in the count 0-2, common for so many of his teammates against a tall Baltimore rookie named Brandon Young. Young is a 26-year-old right-hander who made his 11th major-league start on Friday. None of the previous 10 lasted longer than six innings. Eight of them ended before Young could finish the fifth. After the last one, a three-inning, six-run nightmare against the transient A's, Young told reporters, 'It's just disappointing letting the team down, almost every time I go out.' It inflated his ERA to 6.70 after a 10-start span in which he surrendered 11.6 hits per nine innings. On Friday, an Astros lineup with the American League's second-highest batting average could not muster one through seven innings. Young flirted harder with a perfect game than any pitcher has this season, stunning a crowd of 33,654 that included many family and friends from his hometown of Lumberton, Texas. 'Came here since I was 5,' Young said. 'Sat in the right-field line all the time. Think tickets were like 7 bucks back then. Yeah, I mean, it means a lot coming here. It's still Minute Maid Park to me.' All-Star shortstop Jeremy Peña did not play due to illness. The remaining healthy members of Houston's injury-ravaged team managed to hit one ball harder than 99 mph across the first 7 2/3 innings. Jose Altuve made two first-pitch outs. Yainer Diaz made another during the fifth. Young required just 62 pitches to procure his first 18 outs. Advertisement 'I would say it 100 percent affected me,' said Houston starter Framber Valdez, who surrendered three earned runs without any offensive support. 'I felt like I couldn't even sit down and I was already walking out to go out there. 'Sometimes that's just the game of baseball. Sometimes the pitcher is going to have a better game, is going to throw a perfect game. It definitely affected me. I felt like I couldn't even get a drink of water in and I was already out there.' Taylor Trammell tried to drag bunt on the first pitch of the sixth, only for Young to secure the slow roller and record the first out with no incident. He threw just four pitches to retire the next two Astros, perhaps the first sign that something special could manifest on this otherwise mundane August night. 'We wanted to be aggressive because we know he's a strike thrower. We just couldn't really get anything going offensively,' Espada said. 'We knew he throws strikes. He really commanded both sides of the plate. We were off balance. We really couldn't hit (anything) hard.' Urías didn't, either. He evened the count in the eighth inning, so Young tried to spike a putaway splitter. Urías reached for the pitch, struck it 56 mph and sent it two feet toward the pitcher's mound. Young left the rubber and barehanded the baseball. 'You smell it,' said Urías, who covers 26.9 feet per second when he sprints, in the 38th percentile of all major-league players. 'I just wanted to run as hard as I could.' Young uncorked an off-balance throw while he did. Replays indicated the 26-year-old right-hander could've stopped and set his feet, but adrenaline amid a historic performance makes such clear thinking impossible. 'I just think in that scenario, if BY does set his feet, I think he's got a little better shot to make the play,' Orioles interim manager Tony Mansolino told reporters. 'It's going to be a tough play regardless, but it's a really tough ask in that spot with the emotions and everything going on right there. It shouldn't detract one bit from the game that he threw. It was incredible.' Advertisement Young's throw traveled past first baseman Coby Mayo's outstretched arms and up the right-field line. An accurate throw may nab Urías, but the play's sheer difficulty made it easy for official scorer Dave Matheson to rule it a single. Urías advancing to second base also allowed him to give the play an error it deserved. '(Urías) is a really good hitter, but we've seen him hit that same dribbler 100 times and get thrown out by a couple steps a lot,' Mansolino said. His new team relished the reversal of fortune. 'You're trying to break it,' Urías said, 'you don't want to go home and know (they) just threw a perfect game.' (Top photo of Ramón Urías: Alex Slitz / Getty Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Texas Receives Major News on Nation's No. 1 DL on Tuesday
Texas Receives Major News on Nation's No. 1 DL on Tuesday originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The rich got much richer on Tuesday as Steve Sarkisian and the Texas Longhorns earned the commitment of a second five-star Class of 2026 recruit within six hours. 'BREAKING: Five-Star DL James 'JJ' Johnson has Flipped his Commitment from Georgia to Texas, he tells me for @rivals,' Hayes Fawcett wrote Tuesday on X. 'The 6'3 285 DL from Fort Myers, FL had been Committed to the Bulldogs since June 28th. He's ranked as the No. 1 DL in '26 (per Rivals).' Johnson was a headache for opposing offensive linemen last season at North Fort Myers High School, piling up 60 tackles — nearly half of which for a loss — five sacks and five quarterback hits in nine games. He transferred to Miami Northwestern ahead of his senior season. Johnson previously pledged to join Kirby Smart and the Georgia Bulldogs just over a week after officially visiting the Longhorns on June 20. 'Explosive defensive tackle with all the fixings to make a living up front,' 247Sports director of scouting wrote in a scouting report. 'Hard to overlook push-back power and motor when it has been primed. … Projects as a potential difference-maker at the point of attack for a College Football Playoff contender that can be stationed at different spots across the line.' Texas' gain comes at Smart's expense, much like five-star linebacker Tyler Atkinson's Longhorns addition did earlier in the day. Atkinson grew up a 45-minute drive from Athens, but decided he wanted to wear burnt orange instead of staying home. This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 15, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
SEC Powerhouse is ‘Buzzing' for Nation's No. 1 RB
SEC Powerhouse is 'Buzzing' for Nation's No. 1 RB originally appeared on Athlon Sports. Steve Sarkisian and the Texas Longhorns are putting together an impressive Class of 2026 recruiting haul. That group is currently missing a running back, however, and they're hoping Derrek Cooper, Rivals' No. 1 player at his position, can fill that void. Inside Texas' Justin Wells spoke to Rivals' Josh Newberg on Monday to give an update on Cooper's interest in Sarkisian's program, which is currently on fire on the recruiting trail. 'The Texas buzz is real,' Wells said. 'They have prioritized this guy. They came with a big offer and a big opportunity to play early in Austin. I think Cooper is strongly considering it.' Wells said Cooper's recruitment picked up in Austin in the middle of last month, shortly after the Longhorns' coaching staff learned KJ Edwards was probably headed to Texas A&M. 'Derrek Cooper has always been near the top of the board of most college programs in the country,' Wells said. 'But Texas, you know, they had a handful of guys that they were in on.' Wells added that having a new running backs coach, Chad Scott, 'kind of muddied the waters a little bit with the guys that Tashard Choice had built in with.' Scott, who joined Sarkisian's staff in February after serving as West Virginia's offensive coordinator and running backs coach, convinced Cooper to visit Texas in April. '(Cooper) absolutely loved it, enough so that at the end of his official visits in June, he decided he wanted to cancel his announcement and he wanted to see Texas a little bit more closely,' Wells said. According to 247Sports, Cooper rushed for 905 yards and 13 touchdowns on 124 carries as a junior for Chaminade-Madonna Prep (Fla.) last season. This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 15, 2025, where it first appeared.
